“Did she tell you she was coming?” he asked.
“Yes, Papa.” And then in a very low voice she spoke again. “Madame Guibert is coming on my account.”
M. Dulaurens, who was taking short steps up and down the room for the sake of his digestion (for this room with its ever closed bookcases was particularly useful to him for this health-giving exercise), stopped suddenly and seemed to realise at last that something unusual was going on in his house.
“On your account?” he repeated uneasily.
With the brusque quickness of the irresolute, Alice at once burnt her boats:
“Father, don’t you wish me to be happy?” she asked.
“Certainly, certainly! We wish it above all things.” And already he saw all sorts of difficulties to disturb his peaceful existence in the future and even his digestion at the present time. However, he loved his pretty Alice, whose gentleness harmonised with his own character, and he would even have adored and spoilt her, had he not been restrained by the fear of his wife and the vain desire to imitate in her absence her authoritative ways. Distracted between so many feelings, whose complexity frightened him and hardened his usually benign face, he demanded an explanation.
“You talk to me about Madame Guibert and then about your happiness. I don’t understand.”
Alice hesitated no longer, and her nervousness itself prevented her from guessing her father’s thoughts.
“She is going to ask for my hand on behalf of her son.”