"Ah, bless me! you are speaking of Caroline," cried the Marchioness, trembling. "Stop, stop, my son! The shock is rude, and I was not prepared for it."
"O, do not say that!" resumed the Marquis, warmly; "if the shock is too rude, I do not want you to bear it. I will give it all up; I will never marry--"
"Never marry! Why, that would be worse still! Come, come, do let me know where I am! It is, perhaps, easier to bear than it seems. It is not so much her birth. Her father was knighted: that's nothing very great; but if that was really all! There is this poverty which has fallen upon her. You may tell me that but for you I should have fallen into it myself; but I should have died, while she--she has courage to work for a living, and to accept a kind of domestic service--"
"Heavens!" cried the Marquis, "would you make a blemish of what is the crowning merit of her life?"
"No, no, not I," returned the Marchioness, eagerly, "quite the contrary; but the world is so--"
"That is true too, and I was wrong to let it influence me. Come! we are in the midst of love-matches, so I have only one more objection to make. Caroline is twenty-five years old--"
"It is not that. She is young enough, if her heart is as pure, as unsophisticated as your own; but she has been in love before."
"No. I know her whole life. I have conversed with her sister; she was to have married, but she has never really loved."
"Still, between this projected marriage and the time when she came to us some years must have elapsed--"
"I have inquired about this. I know her life day by day and almost hour by hour. If I tell you that Mlle de Saint-Geneix is worthy of you and of me, it is because I know it. A foolish passion has not blinded me. No, a serious love based upon reflection, upon comparison with all other women, upon certainty, has given me strength to keep silence and to wait, wishing to convince you on good grounds."
The Marquis talked with his mother some time longer, and he triumphed. He used all the eloquence of passion, and all that filial tenderness of which he had given so many proofs. His mother was touched and yielded.
"Well, now," cried the Marquis, "will you let me call her here on your behalf? Are you willing that, for the first time,--in your presence, at your feet,--I should tell her that I love her? See, I yet dare not tell her alone! One cold look, one word of distrust, would break my heart. Here, in your presence, I can speak, I will convince her."