"It is infinitely kind of you, monsieur Vauquelin. I fear that a month is the very most I can manage."
"Even to do us a service?"
"Ah, a 'service'!" She smiled. "You will find plenty of people ready to do you such services."
"Not plenty of mesdemoiselles Paumelle. I am in earnest. It is dull here for Blanche, alone with me. I have done my best for her, I am not consciously selfish—I have sat at home when I wanted to go out, and gone out when I wanted to stop at home. I have taken her to the Français and pretended to enjoy myself, though I could have yawned my head off, and the question of her clothes has absorbed me more than the affairs of France. But I am old. All my tenderness for her cannot alter that."
"You do not seem to me old," said mademoiselle Paumelle.
"Don't I?" said Vauquelin, regarding her gratefully. "Look how grey my moustache is getting. And yet, do you know, when we're all laughing together I feel as young as ever I was."
"Your manner is young. The face alters ever so long before the manner."
"I am forty-f—er—over forty, and Blanche is twenty-one. What will you? I must get her married soon. It is my paramount desire. I rather fancy that Daudenarde and she may not dislike each other—the gentleman you saw the other evening."
"She was doing her hair from seven o'clock till eight, and he sighed when he handed her the lemonade."
"Your observation is invaluable. I must have a chat with his mother soon. It would be an excellent match. In the meantime she stands in need of the companionship and counsel of a young lady like you; she needs it most urgently. If your stepfather can spare you——"