All the time she was entertaining Madame Orlandi and Mademoiselle de Songeon with her smiles and graces she was saying to herself:
“I am quite certain she is being influenced by that wheedling little creature, who is trying to get her for her own brother.”
And turning to the Captain, who was talking to M. Dulaurens and M. Landeau, she noticed that his eyes were following the two girls.
“I wasn’t wrong,” she said to herself. “The danger is there.”
Little used to reflection and impatient of every discussion which could lessen her authority, she never asked herself whether she could trust Alice’s future to this honourable man; whether, indeed, it was not her duty to do so, should her child’s love have involuntarily been given to him. She quite understood, without admitting it to herself, that a comparison could only be unfavorable to M. de Marthenay, who had already been mixed up in a disgraceful liaison and whose military career was without glory or promise. Instinctively she put from her the thought of any possible rivalry which could at the last moment disturb an arrangement to which she had irrevocably made up her mind, an arrangement which flattered at once her insufferable conceit and her still more overbearing motherly pride. As she chose for her daughter what she would have chosen for herself, she was in no doubt as to the wisdom of her choice and her own disinterestedness.
In the meantime Isabelle Orlandi, stopping Jean Berlier as he was going up to join the group of men, whispered:
“What do you think of him?”
“Of whom?”
“M. Landeau.”
“I don’t think one way or the other,” Jean replied.