But Madame Beaurepas shrewdly held to her idea. “She is trying it in her own way; she does it very quietly. She doesn’t want an American; she wants a foreigner. And she wants a mari sérieux. But she is travelling over Europe in search of one. She would like a magistrate.”
“A magistrate?”
“A gros bonnet of some kind; a professor or a deputy.”
“I am very sorry for the poor girl,” I said, laughing.
“You needn’t pity her too much; she’s a sly thing.”
“Ah, for that, no!” I exclaimed. “She’s a charming girl.”
Madame Beaurepas gave an elderly grin. “She has hooked you, eh? But the mother won’t have you.”
I developed my idea, without heeding this insinuation. “She’s a charming girl, but she is a little odd. It’s a necessity of her position. She is less submissive to her mother than she has to pretend to be. That’s in self-defence; it’s to make her life possible.”
“She wishes to get away from her mother,” continued Madame Beaurepas. “She wishes to courir les champs.”
“She wishes to go to America, her native country.”