"Not that I disapproved, you must understand. No daughter could be more devoted. I could not be without her now. But I had a hope--a mother's foolish hope--that perhaps it might be a love affair; that the marriage would renew his interest in life and thus accomplish what the physicians could not do--save him." "Good old Alain," said Dumaresque, with real feeling in his tones. "He deserved to live and win her. I can imagine no better fortune for a man." "But it was an empty hope, and a sad wedding," continued the dowager, with a sigh. "That was, to her, a day of gloom, which to others is the one day to look forward to through girlhood and backward to from old age. Oh, yes; it is not so much to be wondered at that she is a creature of moods and ideals outlined on a background of shadow." The voice of the Marquise sounded through the hall and up the stairs. She was singing, joying as a bird. The eyes of the two met, and Dumaresque laughed. "Oh! and what is that but a mood, too?" demanded the dowager; "a mood that is pleasant, I grant you, and it has lasted longer than usual--ever since we came to Paris. I enjoy it, but I like to know the reason of things. I guess at it in this case; yet it eludes me." Dumaresque raised his brows and smiled as one who invites further confidences. But he received instead a keen glance from the old eyes, and a question: "Loris, who is the man?" "What! You ask me?" "There is no other to ask; you know all the men she has met; you are not a fool, and an artist's eye is trained to observe." "It has not served me in this case, my god-mother." "Which means you will not tell. I shall suspect it is yourself if you conspire to keep it from me." "Pouf! When it is myself I shall be so eager to let it be known that no one will have time to ask a question." "That is good," she said approvingly. "I must rest now. I have talked so long; but a word, Loris; she likes you, she trusts you, and that--well, that goes far." And all the morning her assurance made for him hours of brightness. The stranger of Fontainbleau had drifted into the background, and should never have real place in their lives. She liked and trusted _him_; and that would go far. He was happy in imagining the happiness that might be, forgetful of another lover, one among the poets, who avowed that the happiness of the future was the only real happiness of the world. He was pleased that his god-mother had confided to him these little facts of family history. He remembered how intensely eager the dowager had been for Alain's marriage, years before, that there might be an heir; and he remembered, in part, the cause--her detestation of a female relative whose son would inherit the Marquisate should a son be born to her, and Alain die without children. He could see how eagerly the dowager would have consented to a marriage with even the poorest of poor relations if both the Marquisate and Alain might be saved by it.