But the stolid Englishman, surveying the afflicted parents with that direct, undauntable soldier-look of his, appeared to be entirely unmoved and awaiting further remarks from Madame Bontemps; and as these were not after some seconds forthcoming, he ventured to represent to Madame with infinite courtesy that she appeared to be the victim of an absurd misapprehension, which, in a woman of her intellect and capacity, paralyzed him with amazement. She had possibly taken some exaggerated statements uttered in the course of a lover's quarrel literally. Madame's words almost pointed to some vague suspicion that his wife--"my little wife," he repeated, smiling--had perturbed the relations between those young people, such a very droll supposition. If--as Madame here hastened to assert--M. le Vicomte de Vieuxbois, whose father had been a friend of his own, had been observed to converse in an agitated manner with Mrs. Allonby, to whom, as to other pensionnaires, the Vicomte had obligingly given Italian lessons, what more natural--Mrs. Allonby was herself a mother, the wife of the Vicomte's father's friend; she was older than she appeared, while M. de Vieuxbois was younger--what more natural than for a young man, suffering from the apparent coldness and misunderstandings of his betrothed, and far from his own mother, to seek counsel and comfort of a lady by her age and experience eminently calculated to give them? As a simple matter of fact, he was aware of all that had occurred; he had been deeply interested in the course of the young man's love, which had met with unusual, but not unnatural, obstacles, triumphantly and happily surmounted, until this unfortunate, but truly absurd, little misunderstanding arose. Madame probably knew that _English_ wives had no secrets from their husbands, so that for M. de Vieuxbois to confide in Mrs. Allonby the depth of his passion and the misfortune of the various obstacles to its fulfilment, was in effect to confide in himself. What a pity to let suspicions so absurd divide two young and loving hearts! Mademoiselle's ear had doubtless been abused by mischievous, misunderstood tittle-tattle. Girls were like that, he knew from experience, and, having had the good fortune to win the best and most charming of wives himself, it hurt him to think of M. de Vieuxbois missing such a blessing--merely because of a little misconception of his conduct--a misconception absolutely incredible in a person of Madame's sagacity and knowledge of the world. In his anxiety for the young people's happiness, he actually found himself forgetting the necessity for extracting an apology for an unwarrantable act of incivility to his wife, the necessity of which both Monsieur and Madame Bontemps would at once admit.