"There you are, my children! What a nice walk you must have had! From the waterfall by the works I saw you in the corn leaning towards each other like lovers."
M. Joseph Oberlé questioned the faces of his children, and saw that Lucienne at least was smiling.
"Did we have things to tell each other?" he went on. "Great secrets, perhaps?"
Lucienne, embarrassed by the nearness of the lodge, and still more so by the exasperation of her brother, answered quickly:
"Yes; I have spoken to Jean. He has understood. He will not oppose my wishes."
The father seized his son's hand. "I expected nothing else from him. I thank you, Jean. I shall not forget that."
In his left hand he took Lucienne's, and, like a happy father between his two children, he crossed the park by the long, winding carriage drive.
A woman behind the drawing-room window saw them come, and her pleasure in looking at this scene was not undiluted. She asked herself if the father and children had united against her.
"You know, dear Jean," said the father, holding up his head and, as it were, questioning the front of the château. "You know that I wish to spare susceptibilities and to prepare solutions, and not to insist on them until I am forced to do so. We are invited to the Brausigs'——"
"Ah! is it already settled?"