“Presumably, I have none to relate, mademoiselle.”
“Or that you don’t choose to relate them. However, you are your own master. For my part, I tell everything that concerns me, because hitherto I have had nothing to keep secret. I am an orphan; my father, who was an army contractor, left me twenty-five thousand francs a year. I live with Monsieur Roquencourt, my mother’s brother and my guardian; and he lets me do just as I choose, because he knows that I have been accustomed to that from my childhood. That is my whole history, and you know me as well now as if we had been brought up together.”
She thought perhaps that her confidence would provoke mine; but I replied simply:
“How does it happen that, being as rich and lovely as you are, you have never married?”
“Ah! I was certain that you would ask me that question; I am asked it so often! Bless my soul! monsieur, is there such a terrible hurry about being married, and placing myself under the control of a man who perhaps would not let me do as I wished? I am so happy with my uncle and he is so good, especially when he doesn’t talk about his Crispins and his Lafleurs! really, I tremble at the thought of losing my liberty; and then, I tell you frankly, I have never yet met any man who deserved that I should sacrifice so much to him.”
“You are happy, mademoiselle; believe me, you are very wise to remain so; do not risk the repose of your whole life by binding yourself to someone by whom you think that you are loved, and who will betray you in the most dastardly way! No, do not marry.”
Caroline gazed at me in amazement; she was silent for a few moments, then she began to laugh, saying:
“You are the first person who ever talked to me like that; I was right in thinking that you did not resemble the rest of the world.”
On the day following this conversation, after listening, and laughing heartily the while, to the gallant remarks of a number of young men, Mademoiselle Derbin came, as she was accustomed to do, to the window from which I was gazing at the landscape which stretched out before us.
“Always admiring these mountains, are you not, monsieur?”