“And you thought, when you saw her, that this extraordinary emotion was caused by some special interest she took in myself. At any rate, you said so to me.”
“Certainly. I promised I would tell you. Besides, the child pleased me. She was anything but commonplace. And her determination the following morning confirmed the good opinion I had formed of her.”
“Her resolve to enter the convent?”
“You are right.”
“In a word, then, Mademoiselle Lichtenbach has abjured the world for my sake. This child will have been recompensed for her devoted tenderness by the loss of everything happy and pleasant life had in store for her; and she is now destined to die poor; wearing a nun’s robe, with shorn hair, attending to the wants of the destitute?”
“Yes.”
“Uncle Graff, in your opinion, are children responsible for the misdeeds of their parents?”
The old man did not reply.
“You do not reply,” urged Marcel. “My question troubles you?”
“It troubles me greatly. One day, in this very room, I told an envoy of Lichtenbach’s, who made us an offer of the hand of his daughter for you, that all the Graffs would rise in their graves if a Baradier were to marry a Lichtenbach.”