Colonel de St. Severan treated all this as girlish sentimentality, and told her to talk it all over with her good old friend, Monsieur le Curé, who would advise her as to what she ought to do.
Poor, gentle, yielding little Marie! how could she resist the persuasion and the reasoning of her beloved adopted father and the good Curé? She knew not how to answer when in measured accents they spoke of the dreadful consequences which any indulgence in romantic feelings might lead to, and counselled her to accept—as a safeguard against the dangerous inclination of her own heart for one who was about to become the husband of another—the pleasing and pious young Comte who now sought her in marriage. She could not, as we have said, reason with them about it; but from her heart burst forth the cry, "Oh, no! It cannot be right to marry the Comte Charles when I love another better than I can love him."
"Poor child!" replied the Curé compassionately; "we only want to make you happy, and your loving father by adoption will not press you for an answer. In the meantime you can see Monsieur le Comte Charles now and then, and think over all that we have said to you."
Marie at length consented to see her proposed suitor occasionally, but only on this condition, that he, or at least his father, should be told the whole truth. That is to say, that she was still smarting under the pain which a final separation from one whom she had loved caused her, and that consequently she did not feel inclined to entertain the thought of marrying at all. Nevertheless, in compliance with the wishes of her cher père, she would, if Monsieur le Comte de Morlaix still wished it, receive the visits of his son in order that she might become better acquainted with him. But these visits were to be considered strictly as visits of friendship until after the expiration of two months, when she should have completed her twenty-first year, and then she would say if they were to assume another character, or cease altogether.
These conditions were accepted, for the de Morlaix were really most anxious to win Marie for their son, and they had little doubt of his making a favourable impression upon the refractory young lady.
Marie was far too timid to assert her own sense of right by saying definitely, "I will not give my hand without my heart; for surely God cannot call upon me to swear falsely—to swear an allegiance to one for whom I have not even a very strong feeling of preference."
She longed to escape from this proposed marriage; but when she saw that every one around her looked upon her disinclination to it as a wicked indulgence in forbidden memories, she began to doubt herself, and to suppose that although she could not understand it, it must be wrong of her to refuse the Comte Charles. Her only hope of support was from Flora Adair; and she wrote her a long history of it all, begging her to say if she too thought it right for her to marry the Comte Charles; "for," she added, candidly, "I believe it is true to say that it is the memory of what I once felt for another which makes me wish to refuse him. He is very good and kind, and had I never known Edmund, I dare say I should have married him just because he is so good and kind, and because mon cher père wishes it. But as it is—— Flora, what shall I do? The thought of this marriage is hateful to me now."
Flora's answer, however, destroyed her last hope of support. It ran thus:—
"My poor darling Mignonne,
"I must not dare to advise you at such a time as the present, when peace, happiness, everything, depends upon your decision. I have no right to come between you and your adopted father, Colonel de St. Severan, and his friends. They have advised you, and now your own heart and conscience can alone decide the question. One word only will I say,—no man's counsel is infallible; and outside the Church's definitions of right and wrong, our conscience is the only code by which God will judge us. Trust to Him alone, and, under Him, to your own sense of right, and you cannot go wrong.