“You have heard?” asked Monsieur Daunay, and a host of questions looked from his eyes.
“That you have proposed to Mademoiselle Vicaud, yes; and that she has answered you, I fear, not favorably; yes, I have heard.”
“You have seen her?”
“I was with her mother, speaking with her of it, when Claire came.”
“I have intruded thus upon you,” said Monsieur Daunay, “in the faint hope that you might be able, after seeing her, to give me some encouragement, since from her I could elicit none. She was sullen, silent, reproached me for my haste. After all these years!” Monsieur Daunay groaned, and dropped again into his chair, folding his arms and bowing his head in a despairing acquiescence to fate’s cruelty. “After all these years!” he repeated.
Damier saw down a long vista of them, sunny with the encouraging smiles of the charming Claire.
“You have assured me,” Daunay presently said, “that you were not the cause of this change in Claire.”
It was a rather perplexing question, but Damier was able truthfully to answer it with: “I can again assure you that it is only through her relation with her mother that Claire interests me.”
“And so she has assured me, again and again, and that all her affection was for me. And yet, now that I can claim her—now that I come, trusting and hoping, she turns from me; she mutters that I am too old; not rich enough. Ah, mon Dieu!”