Maurice bit his lips; he had always suspected Morand loved Geneviève.
"Oh!" said Maurice, "that explains his familiarity with you."
"It seems to me, sir," said Geneviève, smiling, "that this familiarity, which is hardly even that of a friend, does not need any explanation."
"Oh, pardon me, Madame, you know all affectionate natures are jealous, and my friendship was jealous of that you appear to feel for Monsieur Morand."
He ceased talking. Geneviève also remained silent. Nothing further was said that day respecting Morand, and Maurice quitted Geneviève more than ever in love, for he was jealous.
However blinded the young man might be by his passion, whatever turmoil might be in his heart, there were in the recital of Geneviève many gaps, much hesitation, and many concealments, to which at the moment he had paid no attention, but which now returned to his memory and strangely tortured him. The feeling that there was some mystery about the family could not be dispelled even by the liberty allowed him by Dixmer of conversing with Geneviève as often and as long as he pleased, nor by the solitary interview they had together every evening. Moreover, Maurice had now become a constant and expected guest at the house, where he not only enjoyed unrestrained intercourse with Geneviève, who seemed guarded by her angelic purity from any advances on the part of the young man, but he now escorted her in all the excursions made from time to time in the quarter in which she lived. In the midst of this established intimacy one thing surprised him. The more he sought (perhaps the better to watch his sentiments for Geneviève) the friendship of Morand, by whose genius, notwithstanding his prejudice, he felt himself captivated, and whose pleasing manners won him more and more every day, the greater the inclination evinced by this whimsical man to avoid him. Of this he complained bitterly to Geneviève; for he did not doubt that Morand had discerned in him a rival, and that his conduct proceeded from jealousy.
"The Citizen Morand hates me," said he one day to Geneviève.
"You?" said Geneviève, with a look of astonishment. "You?—Monsieur Morand hates you?"
"Yes; I am sure of it."
"And why should he hate you?"