"Mademoiselle de La Tour-d'Adam is ill."
The musicians stopped playing. Gaston rushed to his cousin. Louise was the first to take in hers Eve's ice-cold hands; she could not refrain from pressing them to her lips.
Eve soon opened her eyes, saw Louise on her knees, Gaston at her side, smiled on them with angelic sweetness, and addressing herself to the young girl:
"You do not know me," she said, "but I wish you to be my friend. You will come to see me, will you not?"
The little branch of jasmine which Eve had taken from her own forehead remained in Louise's hands. Madame du Castellet, aided by her nephew, carried away Eve de la Tour-d'Adam.
A few minutes after Louise was conducted home.
Clarisse Dufresnois did not fail to attribute Eve's fainting to the desire of appearing interesting; this was at least the version which she gave to the young ladies Suzanne, Valerie, Lucienne, and Albertine, but the supposition which she expressed to the Vicomte de la Perlière, the object of her seventh matrimonial dream, was less inoffensive.
"Mademoiselle de La Tour-d'Adam," said she, "was taken ill of jealousy and vexation, on remarking her cousin's attention to Mlle, de Rouvray's protégé. "
She enlarged on this theme with so much wit, that the Vicomte de la Perlière, a man of sense who did not lack heart, forgot at the end of the winter to propose to her. The autumn following he asked and obtained Leonore's hand, which did not prevent Clarisse from being more witty than ever.