"Ah! what do you say? Truly? Tell me quickly then!"
"Yes, I will speak. This is the moment I was waiting for; I have held myself in reserve, and turned all my longings toward this blessed hour, when my brother, reconciled to God, to truth, and to himself, could take a wife worthy to be your daughter. And when such a moment came I intended to say this: Mother, I also can present you with a second daughter, more lovely than the first and no less pure. For a year, for more than a year, I have devotedly loved a most perfect being. She has suspected this perhaps, but she does not know it; I have so much respect and esteem for her that without your consent I well knew I should never gain her own. Besides, she gave me to understand this sharply one day, one single day, when my secret came near escaping me in spite of myself, four months ago, and I have since kept strict silence in her presence and in yours. It was my duty not to plunge you into anxieties which, thank God! no longer exist. Your fate, my brother's, and my own are henceforth secure. Now, comfortably rich, I may properly refuse to enlarge my fortune, and I can marry according to my inclinations. You have a sacrifice to make for me nevertheless; but your motherly love will not refuse, for it involves the happiness of my whole life. This lady belongs to an honorable family; you made sure of this yourself before you admitted her to intimacy with you; but she does not belong to one of those ancient and illustrious lines, for which you have a preference that I do not mean to oppose. I said you would have to make a sacrifice for me; will you do it? Do you love me enough? Yes, mother, yes, your heart, which I can feel beating, will yield without regret, in its vast maternal tenderness, to the prayer of a son who worships you."
"Ah, bless me! you are speaking of Caroline," cried the Marchioness, trembling. "Stop, stop, my son! The shock is rude, and I was not prepared for it."
"O, do not say that!" resumed the Marquis, warmly; "if the shock is too rude, I do not want you to bear it. I will give it all up; I will never marry—"
"Never marry! Why, that would be worse still! Come, come, do let me know where I am! It is, perhaps, easier to bear than it seems. It is not so much her birth. Her father was knighted: that's nothing very great; but if that was really all! There is this poverty which has fallen upon her. You may tell me that but for you I should have fallen into it myself; but I should have died, while she—she has courage to work for a living, and to accept a kind of domestic service—"
"Heavens!" cried the Marquis, "would you make a blemish of what is the crowning merit of her life?"
"No, no, not I," returned the Marchioness, eagerly, "quite the contrary; but the world is so—"
"So unjust and so blind!"
"That is true too, and I was wrong to let it influence me. Come! we are in the midst of love-matches, so I have only one more objection to make. Caroline is twenty-five years old—"
"And I am now over thirty-four myself."