"There you are, my children! What a nice walk you must have had! From the waterfall by the works I saw you in the corn leaning towards each other like lovers."
M. Joseph Oberlé questioned the faces of his children, and saw that Lucienne at least was smiling.
"Did we have things to tell each other?" he went on. "Great secrets, perhaps?"
Lucienne, embarrassed by the nearness of the lodge, and still more so by the exasperation of her brother, answered quickly:
"Yes; I have spoken to Jean. He has understood. He will not oppose my wishes."
The father seized his son's hand. "I expected nothing else from him. I thank you, Jean. I shall not forget that."
In his left hand he took Lucienne's, and, like a happy father between his two children, he crossed the park by the long, winding carriage drive.
A woman behind the drawing-room window saw them come, and her pleasure in looking at this scene was not undiluted. She asked herself if the father and children had united against her.
"You know, dear Jean," said the father, holding up his head and, as it were, questioning the front of the château. "You know that I wish to spare susceptibilities and to prepare solutions, and not to insist on them until I am forced to do so. We are invited to the Brausigs'----"
"Yes, to a dinner, to a fairly large evening party--not too many people. I think that would be a very good opportunity to present Lieutenant von Farnow to your mother. I shall only speak of this to your mother later on. And in order not to bias any of her impressions--you know how timid she is--so that she does not meet my look when she talks to this young man, I shall refuse for myself--I shall confide Lucienne's future to you. All my dream is to make this dear one happy. Not a word to my father. He will be the last to learn what does not really concern him but secondarily."
The great empty space by the flight of steps had not seen for a long time such a united group walk on the well-rolled gravel.
In the drawing-room, keeping herself a little back, trying to make her mind easy and not succeeding, Madame Oberlé had left off working. The embroidery was on the floor.
"I shall thus assist at the interview, and I shall take mamma there, who will suspect nothing. What a part to play to avoid greater evils! Happily, she will forgive me one day when she knows everything."