“My child, take care, perhaps you are mistaken.”
“Oh, no, I am not mistaken! Just now, at the door, when he was going away, he said some words to me. These words were nothing. But if you had seen his distress in spite of all his efforts to control it! Susie, dear Susie, by the affection which I bear you, and God knows how great is that affection, this is my conviction, my absolute conviction—if, instead of being Miss Percival, I had been a poor little girl without a penny Jean would then have taken my hand, and have told me that he loved me, and if he had spoken to me thus, do you know what I should have replied?”
“That you loved him, too?”
“Yes; and that is why I am so happy. With me it is a fixed idea that I must adore the man who will be my husband. Well! I don’t say that I adore Jean, no, not yet; but still it is beginning, Susie, and it is beginning so sweetly.”
“Bettina, it really makes me uneasy to see you in this state of excitement. I do not deny that Monsieur Reynaud is much attached to you—”
“Oh, more than that, more than that!”
“Loves you, if you like; yes, you are right, you are quite right. He loves you; and are you not worthy, my darling, of all the love that one can bear you? As to Jean—it is progressing decidedly, here am I also calling him Jean—well! you know what I think of him. I rank him very, very high. But in spite of that, is he really a suitable husband for you?”
“Yes, if I love him.”
“I am trying to talk sensibly to you, and you, on the contrary—Understand me, Bettina; I have an experience of the world which you can not have. Since our arrival in Paris, we have been launched into a very brilliant, very animated, very aristocratic society. You might have been already, if you had liked, marchioness or princess.”
“Yes, but I did not like.”