“Alice, do look at these carnations,” said Madame Dulaurens Hurriedly, “and the jessamine and roses. They are very nice, Pierre, thank you.” At last she glanced at her daughter. Alice’s silence surprised her. The girl was deathly pale and kept her eyes cast to the ground. When she raised them she met her mother’s gaze and, unable to bear it any longer, burst into tears. Madame Dulaurens took her in her arms. “Dearest, what is the matter?” she said. “I don’t know. Why do you want to marry me off so soon? I am quite happy. Keep me here still, mother darling.” Madame Dulaurens stroked the girl’s head and her cheeks as she used to do when Alice was a child. “But I am not going to lose you, my sweet. Have I not explained that you are not going to leave me?” she added with a smile, though still rather anxiously: “Think what a lovely Countess of Marthenay you will make, dear! And don’t you like the Count?” “Oh, I don’t know!” It was her frightened way of refusing, Madame Dulaurens had a presentiment of it. “We will fix the wedding for any day you choose,” said she. At this sentence, which gave a very present reality to the dreaded event, Alice shuddered and in a heartrending voice entreated: “No, no, I can’t do it. Oh, mother, mother!” Madame Dulaurens was stupefied by this simultaneous blow at her affection and her will. But woman of the world as she was, she thought the time for an explanation badly chosen. “Dear heart, be calm. I quite understand your feelings. It will all be arranged. It is just lunch-time, and our friends are arriving. Dry your tears quickly, do, dear. Trust in your mother.” Alice had succeeded in regaining her calm when a servant announced that Madame and Mademoiselle Orlandi were in the drawing-room. As she went down first to receive her visitors, Madame Dulaurens reflected. She was not unduly disturbed by Alice’s strange refusal, seeing in it only one of those girlish whims which spring up so easily and as quickly die again. But she felt she knew the cause and blamed herself. “It was I who brought Captain Guibert here,” she thought. “It is all my fault. And what an absurd idea to ask him here to lunch to-day!” In her anger against the young man, in whom she already saw the obstacle to her plans, she was not far from considering herself his benefactress and accusing him therefore of ingratitude, because she attached no little importance to her invitations as a passport to celebrity for her guests. After lunch, Madame Dulaurens was unable to repress a certain new disquiet. Looking for Alice, as she kept doing constantly, she saw her through the drawing-room window, going towards the oakwood on Paule Guibert’s arm. All the time she was entertaining Madame Orlandi and Mademoiselle de Songeon with her smiles and graces she was saying to herself: “I am quite certain she is being influenced by that wheedling little creature, who is trying to get her for her own brother.”