"Cesarine!" Mme. de Thaller called, in a voice which sounded at once like a prayer and a threat.
"I am going to dress myself, mamma," she answered.
"Come back!"
"So that you can scold me if I am not ready when you want to go?
Thank you, no."
"I command you to come back, Cesarine."
No answer. She was far already.
Mme. de Thaller closed the door of the little parlor, and returning to take a seat by M. de Traggers, "What a singular girl!" she said.
Meantime he was watching in the glass what was going on in the other room. The suspicious-looking man was there still, and alone.
A servant had brought him pen, ink and paper; and he was writing rapidly.
"How is it that they leave him there alone?" wondered Marius.
And he endeavored to find upon the features of the baroness an answer to the confused presentiments which agitated his brain. But there was no longer any trace of the emotion which she had manifested when taken unawares. Having had time for reflection, she had composed for herself an impenetrable countenance. Somewhat surprised at M. de Traggers silence, "I was saying," she repeated, "that Cesarine is a strange girl."
Still absorbed by the scene in the grand parlor, "Strange, indeed!" he answered.
"And such is," said the baroness with a sigh, "the result of M. de Thaller's weakness, and above all of my own."
"We have no child but Cesarine; and it was natural that we should spoil her. Her fancy has been, and is still, our only law. She has never had time to express a wish: she is obeyed before she has spoken."
She sighed again, and deeper than the first time. "You have just seen," she went on, "the results of that insane education. And yet it would not do to trust appearances. Cesarine, believe me, is not as extravagant as she seems. She possesses solid qualities, - of those which a man expects of the woman who is to be his wife."
Without taking his eyes off the glass, "I believe you madame," said M. de Traggers.
"With her father, with me especially, she is capricious, wilful, and violent; but, in the hands of the husband of her choice, she would be like wax in the hands of the modeler."
The man in the parlor had finished his letter, and, with an equivocal smile, was reading it over.
"Believe me, madame," replied M. de Traggers, "I have perfectly understood how much naive boasting there was in all that Mlle.
Cesarine told me."
"Then, really, you do not judge her too severely?"
"Your heart has not more indulgence for her than my own."
"And yet it is from you that her first real sorrow comes."
"From me?"
The baroness shook her head in a melancholy way, to convey an idea of her maternal affection and anxiety.
"Yes, from you, my dear marquis," she replied, "from you alone.
On the very day you entered this house, Cesarine's whole nature changed."
Having read his letter over, the man in the grand parlor had folded it, and slipped it into his pocket, and, having left his seat, seemed to be waiting for something. M. de Traggers was following, in the glass, his every motion, with the most eager curiosity. And nevertheless, as he felt the absolute necessity of saying something, were it only to avoid attracting the attention of the baroness, "What!" he said, "Mlle. Cesarine's nature did change, then?"
"In one night. Had she not met the hero of whom every girl dreams?
- a man of thirty, bearing one of the oldest names in France."
She stopped, expecting an answer, a word, an exclamation. But, as M. de Traggers said nothing, "Did you never notice any thing then?" she asked.
"Nothing."
"And suppose I were to tell you myself, that my poor Cesarine, alas!
- loves you?"
M. de Traggers started. Had he been less occupied with the personage in the grand parlor, he would certainly not have allowed the conversation to drift in this channel. He understood his mistake; and, in an icy tone, "Permit me, madame," he said, "to believe that you are jesting."
"And suppose it were the truth."
"It would make me unhappy in the extreme."
"Sir!"
"For the reason which I have already told you, that I love Mlle.
Gilberte Favoral with the deepest and the purest love, and that for the past three years she has been, before God, my affianced bride."
Something like a flash of anger passed over Mme. de Thaller's eyes.
"And I," she exclaimed, - "I tell you that this marriage is senseless."
"I wish it were still more so, that I might the better show to Gilberte how dear she is to me."
Calm in appearance, the baroness was scratching with her nails the satin of the chair on which she was sitting.
"Then," she went on, "your resolution is settled."
"Irrevocably."
"Still, now, come, between us who are no longer children, suppose M. de Thaller were to double Cesarine's dowry, to treble it?"
An expression of intense disgust contracted the manly features of Marius de Tregars.
"Ah! not another word, madame," he interrupted.
There was no hope left. Mme. de Thaller fully realized it by the tone in which he spoke. She remained pensive for over a minute, and suddenly, like a person who has finally made up her mind, she rang.
A footman appeared.
"Do what I told you!" she ordered.
And as soon as the footman had gone, turning to M. de Tregars, "Alas!" she said, "who would have thought that I would curse the day when you first entered our house?"
But, whilst, she spoke, M. de Traggers noticed in the glass the result of the order she had just given.
The footman walked into the grand parlor, spoke a few words; and at once the man with the alarming countenance put on his hat and went out.
"This is very strange!" thought M. de Traggers. Meantime, the baroness was going on, "If your intentions are to that point irrevocable, how is it that you are here? You have too much experience of the world not to have understood, this morning, the object of my visit and of my allusions."
Fortunately, M. de Traggers' attention was no longer drawn by the proceedings in the next room. The decisive moment had come: the success of the game he was playing would, perhaps, depend upon his coolness and self-command.
