The front-bell rang; and she went to the door looking very cross.
Gilberte shot a glance at the glass over the mantel-piece, pushed a curl into place and nervously made a change in the flowers in the vases, bunches of roses which she had gathered herself. Adèle showed in the mother and son.
Mme. de la Vaudraye was radiant. A moment before, in the main street, the mere sight of her silk dress, her ceremonious walk and her triumphant expression must have told the inhabitants of Domfront the exact nature of her errand.
She entered with the ease of one who is quite at home. Her way of sitting down showed that she was definitely and blissfully taking possession. There was none of the stiffness, none of the preliminary commonplaces that usually mark this sort of interview. Mme. de la Vaudraye was much too eager to come to the point:
“My dear Gilberte, I wish to ask your hand for my son Guillaume.”
All their love, all the unspeakable happiness of their souls, all their gratitude, all their faith in the future was contained in the glance exchanged by Guillaume and Gilberte. Nothing remained of the irritation which his mother’s air of victory caused him, nothing remained of the anxiety which the other felt at this solemn hour.
Mme. de la Vaudraye did not even wait to hear the answer.
“First of all, my dear child, let me speak to you as a friend and as a woman of experience, who knows only too well, by what she herself has been through, that happiness in married life is based upon material prosperity. You know, don’t you, how Guillaume and I are placed as regards money? On the death of my poor husband....”
Guillaume rose and walked to the open window, as though bored beforehand by what was coming. Gilberte felt very much inclined to join him and to leave Mme. de la Vaudraye to fight out with herself the question of the material prosperity on which married bliss is based. But the older woman’s imperious eye nailed her to her chair; and, nodding her head at intervals, by way of assent, she had to listen to a long speech in which strange phrases like separate and common property, joint estate and settlements kept on recurring.
“That will do nicely,” she said, with an air of deliberation, though she did not understand a single word of what was said.