“What?” Henri asked quickly, interrupting his sister.
“Play! God keep you from it,” answered the Marquise.
“But whom have you,” said Henri, looking at the girl of the golden eyes, “who will help you to remove the traces of this fantasy which the law would not overlook?”
“I have her mother,” replied the Marquise, designating the Georgian, to whom she made a sign to remain.
“We shall meet again,” said Henri, who was thinking anxiously of his friends and felt that it was time to leave.
“No, brother,” she said, “we shall not meet again. I am going back to Spain to enter the Convent of los Dolores.”
“You are too young yet, too lovely,” said Henri, taking her in his arms and giving her a kiss.
“Good-bye,” she said; “there is no consolation when you have lost that which has seemed to you the infinite.”
A week later Paul de Manerville met De Marsay in the Tuileries, on the Terrasse de Feuillants.
“Well, what has become of our beautiful girl of the golden eyes, you rascal?”