"She might marry."
"How likely! and marry—whom, pray?"
The count approached nearer to Lucan, looked him straight in the face, and smiling with some embarrassment:
"Me!" he said.
"Repeat that!" said Lucan.
"Mon cher," rejoined the count, "you see that I am as red as a peony; spare me. I have wished for a long time to broach that delicate question to you, but my courage has failed me; since I have found it, at last, don't deprive me of it."
"My dear friend," said Lucan, "allow me to recover a little first, for I am falling from the clouds. What! you are in love with Julia?"
"To an extraordinary degree, my friend."
"No! there is something under that; you have discovered this means of drawing us together, and you wish to sacrifice yourself for the peace of the family."
"I swear to you that I am not thinking in the least of the peace of the family; I am thinking wholly of my own, which is very much disturbed, for I love that child with an energy of feeling that I never knew before. If I don't marry her, I shall never console myself for the rest of my life."