"As our American friends say: 'Not on your life,'" laughed Philippe. "Molly has taught me a lesson. I am not in love with Miss Julia Kean even as much as with my cousin, and with the example of happiness ever before my eyes that you and my father present, I shall be very careful and pick out for my wife one whom I truly love and who, I hope, truly loves me. I can't quite see how I escaped falling deeply in love with Cousin Molly. She is so sweet and so everything that I admire. Do you know, ma mère, I have an idea that the Providence that looks after children and fools has protected me from a calamity which falling in love with Molly would have been? I have a feeling that my little cousin is already in love with someone else, and that there never has been a chance for me."
"Well, what a wise young man a refusal has made of you!" teased his mother. "Two or three more experiences of the sort will make a real savant of you. What makes you have this feeling, this pricking in your thumbs?"
"Something about the way she spoke of love. Her eyes are certainly the mirrors of her soul, and there was a look in them that made me feel she knew what she was talking about."
"Well, we never can tell. I am glad my thoughtlessness and stupidity have not done any damage," said the marchioness, looking fondly at her handsome son and thinking in her heart that both girls must be either blind or already very much in love not to be crazy about her Adonis.
That night, the soft white clouds that had been the despair of Judy and Pierce all day as they had vainly tried to put them on canvas, came together and managed to make a very large black cloud which finally filled the whole heavens; and a fierce thunder storm ensued.
Molly and Judy lay awake talking. Judy had the hardihood to accuse Molly of having turned down a chance to become the future Marquise d'Ochtè.
"How on earth do you know, Judy? I would never think of telling such a thing even to you, my very best friend. It seems a very unfair advantage to take of a man, to let people know he has been refused. But you are the greatest guesser in the world."
"It didn't take much guessing to come to this conclusion. Who's a mole now, you old bat? I have known for some time that the handsome Philippe has had us both under consideration and it was a toss up which one would be honored. I was betting on you but hoping I would draw the prize," laughed Judy.
"Oh, Judy!" exclaimed Molly, shocked a little and wondering if, after all, Judy was just flirting with her brother Kent.
"Oh, I didn't want to accept him, but I just wanted to jar him a little! I like him very much and am crazy about his mother and father, but his complacency in regard to you and me has rather—rather—well, 'got my goat.' I don't know how else to put it. It has never entered his aristocratic French mind that we would think of refusing him. He isn't exactly conceited, in fact, I don't think he is at all conceited; but things have come his way too much all his life.