Her father continued:
"We have postponed our answer for the present."
She gasped, choking with emotion. At the end of a minute the baron,
smiling, added:
"We did not wish to do anything without consulting you. Your mother
and I are not opposed to this marriage, but we would not seek to
influence you. You are much richer than he is; but, when it is a
question of the happiness of a life, one should not think too much
about money. He has no relations left. If you marry him, then, it
would be as if a son should come into our family; if it were anyone
else, it would be you, our daughter, who would go among strangers. The
young fellow pleases us. Would he please you?"
She stammered, blushing up to the roots of her hair:
"I am willing, papa."
And the father, looking into her eyes and still smiling, murmured:
"I half suspected it, young lady."
She lived till evening in a condition of exhilaration, not knowing
what she was doing, mechanically thinking of one thing by mistake for
another, and with a feeling of weariness, although she had not walked
at all.
Toward six o'clock, as she was sitting with her mother under the plane
tree, the vicomte appeared.