“Come, Louise, don’t be afraid; he has rather a stern manner, but he isn’t unkind.”
“Suppose that monsieur your father should not like me?” murmured Louise timidly; “suppose he should think me too young to be in your service, mademoiselle?”
“Oh! don’t worry about that; as soon as I tell him that you suit me, father won’t think of sending you away.”
Ernestine led the way through her mother’s bedroom, then through another smaller room, and knocked at a door, saying:
“It’s I, papa.”
And Monsieur de Noirmont’s sharp voice replied:
“Well! what is it now?”
The pretty minx opened the door of her father’s study, passed her head only through the opening, and said:
“Are you busy? I have come to introduce someone.”
“Who is it?”