"Henri, I repeat to you, it is absolutely essential for you to go away."
"Leave her, leave her dying? Never!"
"My friend!"
"Never! neither would she consent to it."
"What do you mean?"
"No, she would not allow me to depart,—abandon her son, whom I love as my child,—abandon him in the very moment we are about to realise our highest hopes,—it would be the most culpable folly. I would not do it, and this dear boy would not endure it either. You do not know what he is to me, you do not know what I am to him; indissoluble ties unite us,—him and his mother, and myself."
"I know all that, Henri; I know the power of these ties; I know too that your love, of which perhaps Marie is ignorant, is as pure as it is respectful."
"And you wish to send me away?"
"Yes, because I know that Marie and you are both young; because you are compelled every moment to associate intimately; because the expression of the gratitude she owes you would, to suspicious eyes, seem the expression of a more tender sentiment; because, in fact, I know that the old Marquise of Pont Brillant, shameless old dowager if there is one, has made at the castle, in the presence of twenty persons, wicked and satirical allusions to the age and appearance of the preceptor that Madame Bastien has chosen for her son."
"Oh, that is infamous!"