"No!--no!--we will do nothing of the kind; everything shall be just the other way. There will be no horses, no cabriolet, no trumpeters, no garters except the ones the dear child will wear, and no mulled wine. We will all go on foot, and the only music will be the organ in the old church, and the breakfast will be here, in our beloved Marmouset, and the punch will be mixed by Monsieur Brierley in the Ming bowl I brought, and Monsieur Louis will serve it, and then they will both go to their own home and sleep in their own bed. So there! Not another word, for it is all settled and finished"--and one of her rippling, joyous laughs--a whole dove-cote mingled with any number of silver bells--quivered through the room. Lemois joined in the merriment, shrugging his inscrutable shoulders, repeating that he, of course, was only a captive, and must therefore do as he was bid, a situation which, he added with another low bow, had its good side since so charming a woman as madame held his chain. And yet despite his gayety there was under it all a certain reserve which, although lost on the others, convinced me that the old man had not, by any means, made up his mind as to what he would do. While Mignon was not his legal ward, his care of her all these years must count for something. Madame, of course, was a difficult person to make war upon once she had set her heart on a thing--and she certainly had on this marriage, amazing as it was to him--and yet there was still the girl's future to be considered, and with it his own. All this was in his eyes as I watched him resuming his place by the fire after some of the excitement had begun to quiet down. But none of this--even if she, too, had studied him as I had--would have made any impression on Mignon's champion. She was accustomed to being obeyed--the gang of mechanics who had under her directions performed two days' work in one had found that out. And then, again, her whole purpose in life was to befriend especially those girls who, having no one to stand by them, become broken down by opposition and so marry where their hearts seldom lead. How many had she taken under her wing--how many more would she protect as long as she lived!