“Children are horribly ungrateful,” continued her mother. “You, of whom I took so much care in your delicate childhood and during your typhoid fever, now you are already thinking of leaving me!” Attempting to conceal the selfishness of this complaint, she added: “If only I were sure that your happiness is there! But not to be able to look after your health; to live in daily fear that you might be ill, so far away--in some garrison where there was no doctor; to be always afraid for the peace and comfort of your home, which I should never see; not to be there to welcome your babies, if God sends you any ... that will be my sad life hereafter.” Alice, deeply touched by this show of tenderness and motherly devotion, held out her arms. “Mother, Mother,” she cried, “I will never leave you. I will stay with you.” This half-victory was so quickly won that Madame Dulaurens, thinking it sufficient, insisted no further on her plans and did not pronounce Armand de Marthenay’s name again. “Little Alice, my darling little Alice, I have won you back to me,” she said, pressing the girl to her heart. “I love you so. You don’t know how much I love you. I think I love you too much. I want you to be happy.” These words came naturally to her lips at the very moment when she was breaking her daughter’s heart. But Alice, leaning on the motherly shoulder, saw through the open window a woman in heavy mourning, coming down the avenue towards the house. Slow and bent, Madame Guibert was coming confidently to ask her hand for Marcel. At this sight the girl shuddered and released herself from her mother’s embrace. “She has no warning of what is coming,” she thought. “It is too late. Poor, poor woman!” Madame Dulaurens, astonished and made uneasy again by her daughter’s face, was thinking, “Can she be on the point of changing her mind a second time?” Alice had left the window to avoid the painful sight. “How she will suffer! I won’t do it! I won’t!” she said to herself, a prey to despair and dragging herself from one chair to another. Pity dominated her, even in the ruin of her shattered dream of love. To retard the inevitable blow hanging over this poor woman, already so bowed down under the burden of fate, she did not even remind her mother from whom the fatal refusal ought to come. She kept her near her with idle words. No doubt her father would procrastinate, would decline to give any definite reply. Like all weak people, who were content with the smallest successes, she wished only to spare Madame Guibert too sudden a blow, and would not admit to herself that she felt already incapable of saving her, though she had been the first to weep over it and must weep over it for the rest of her life. After several minutes of anxious expectation Madame Guibert was announced in the drawing-room.