"Come," he said, seeing his brother smile, "you will bring me happiness in everything. I am reminded now that for some days I have had a vexation intense enough in all conscience; it has made me sullen, awkward; my mind has been clouded; I could not see my way clearly. I have been frightfully stupid. I am sure that I shall now recover my faculties." "Again some story of a woman?" asked the Marquis, mastering a vague and sudden uneasiness. "And what would you want it to be? That little De Saint-Geneix occupies my mind more perhaps than she ought." "It is exactly what she ought not to do," quickly replied the Marquis. "Have you not given your oath to our mother? She told me you had. Have you deceived mother?" "No, not at all; but I should like very much to be compelled to deceive her." "Compelled? I have no idea what you mean." "Dear me! Well, this is just what I mean." And the Duke gave his brother a detailed account of how he had at first told a falsehood when he announced himself in love with Caroline, from the commendable motive of getting Urbain himself in love with her; how, seeing that he had not succeeded, he had conceived the plan of making her love him, without loving her; and how at last he had fallen sincerely in love with her himself, without a surety that his feeling was returned. Nevertheless, he added that he counted upon victory if he could only have the courage not to declare himself; and he said all this in terms so delicate or so ambiguous that the Marquis could not give him a moral lecture about it without making himself ridiculous. Then, when the latter, recovering from his stupefaction, attempted to speak of the repose of his mother and the dignity of their domestic life, not daring in his distress to say anything whatever of the respect due to Caroline, the Duke, becoming impressed with a sudden fear that his brother might think it his duty, to give her warning, swore that he would do nothing to tempt her, but that if of her own accord she threw herself bravely into his arms at any given moment, without conditions and without calculation, he was ready to marry her. Was he sincere then? Yes, probably, as he had always been, when eagerness had given the appearance of possibility to what passion had afterward caused him to evade.