“You are a queer man with your daughter! It does not occur to you to ask me if I am fond of les Rouxey.”
Rosalie, at once sent for, was informed that she was to marry Monsieur de Soulas one day early in the month of May.
“I am very much obliged to you, mother, and to you too, father, for having thought of settling me; but I do not mean to marry; I am very happy with you.”
“Mere speeches!” said the Baroness. “You are not in love with Monsieur de Soulas, that is all.”
“If you insist on the plain truth, I will never marry Monsieur de Soulas—”
“Oh! the never of a girl of nineteen!” retorted her mother, with a bitter smile.
“The never of Mademoiselle de Watteville,” said Rosalie with firm decision. “My father, I imagine, has no intention of making me marry against my wishes?”
“No, indeed no!” said the poor Baron, looking affectionately at his daughter.
“Very well!” said the Baroness, sternly controlling the rage of a bigot startled at finding herself unexpectedly defied, “you yourself, Monsieur de Watteville, may take the responsibility of settling your daughter. Consider well, mademoiselle, for if you do not marry to my mind you will get nothing out of me!”
The quarrel thus begun between Madame de Watteville and her husband, who took his daughter’s part, went so far that Rosalie and her father were obliged to spend the summer at les Rouxey; life at the Hotel de Rupt was unendurable. It thus became known in Besancon that Mademoiselle de Watteville had positively refused the Comte de Soulas.