The baroness clasped her hands in ecstasy.
“But what are we to do for this?” inquired Josephine calmly, “for it seems to me that it can only be effected by a sacrifice on your part.”
“I thank you, mademoiselle, for your penetration in seeing that I must make sacrifices. I would never have told you, but you have seen it; and I do not regret that you have seen it. Madame—mademoiselle—those sacrifices appear little to me; will seem nothing; will never be mentioned, or even alluded to after this day, if you, on your part, will lay me under a far heavier obligation, if in short”—here the contemner of things unsubstantial reopened his coat, and brought his ribbon to light again—“if you, madame, will accept me for your son-in-law—if you, mademoiselle, will take me for your husband.”
The baroness and her daughter looked at one another in silence.
“Is it a jest?” inquired the former of the latter.
“Can you think so? Answer Monsieur Perrin. He has just done us a kind office, mother.”
“I shall remember it. Monsieur, permit me to regret that having lately won our gratitude and esteem, you have taken this way of modifying those feelings. But after all,” she added with gentle courtesy, “we may well put your good deeds against this—this error in judgment. The balance is in your favor still, provided you never return to this topic. Come, is it agreed?” The baroness’s manner was full of tact, and the latter sentences were said with an open kindliness of manner. There was nothing to prevent Perrin from dropping the subject, and remaining good friends. A gentleman or a lover would have so done. Monsieur Perrin was neither. He said bitterly, “You refuse me, then.”
The tone and the words were each singly too much for the baroness’s pride. She answered coldly but civilly,—
“I do not refuse you. I do not take an affront into consideration.”
“Be calm, mamma; no affront whatever was intended.”