“Let us love her, Gilberte. We owe her the greatest gratitude for what she is doing. It means the sacrifice of her most cherished ideas and she has consented to that sacrifice of her own accord.”
“Come, Guillaume, don’t make me out better than I am!” protested Mme. de la Vaudraye, in a playful tone. “Are you quite sure that I have not merely yielded to sordid motives? If Gilberte had been a poor girl, without any money....”
“Oh, madame,” said Gilberte, “that counts for so little!”
“Yes, with you and Guillaume, who are young and think only of your happiness, but not with me, who have suffered so much from the change in my fortunes. I can’t help it: one cannot alter at my age; I have a name of which I am very vain; and my dream has always been to restore it to all its brilliancy.”
She playfully stroked Gilberte’s hair:
“And think of all my blandishments, from the very beginning, Mme. Armand! You can’t say that I wasn’t clever in getting round you and making you do what I wanted! Well, then, one day, you tell me that you have bought up my family estates and you offer to reinstate me as mistress of the Logis. How could I have the courage to refuse?”
She displayed a sort of unspoken wish to make amends to Gilberte, a wish which her pride prevented her from revealing as openly as her heart would have prompted her, but which, nevertheless, appeared in her manner of confessing, as though in fun, the shabby side of her behaviour. Gilberte had too much delicacy of mind to take pleasure in this admission and replied:
“It’s your son’s happiness which you have not had the courage to reject. It is so easy to tell that all your ambitions and all your hopes are only for him.”
But Guillaume was less indulgent and exclaimed:
“Really, mother, one would think that you were trying to cheapen your consent! Come, tell her of our talks of the past fortnight, tell her that you know the whole story of our love and that you understand Gilberte, as she deserves, and that that is why you agree.”