“A means of doing what?... Goodness! Eugénie, you get bewildered with your fancies. Do you imagine he wishes to revolutionize the establishment, and supplant your father?...”
“Let us not exaggerate things, I beg, mother. What I wished you to understand was a delicate point. I hoped you would guess it from a word. Come, have you no suspicion of what so greatly troubles me?”
“I haven’t the slightest idea.”
“Indeed!... I am astonished. Well, may he not manifest all this zeal, and affect all these airs of disinterested benevolence, to bring about a secret project?”
“What one, I ask you again? When you go to dreaming impossibilities, you know I can never follow you. Explain yourself clearly.”
“Well, since I am forced to call things by their right names, is he not aiming at my hand?”
“What a droll idea!... Why, he has not a sou left! Everybody knows that. He spent his property in six or seven years, and has nothing more to expect for a long time. So you believe he resolved to become religious, thinking that would be sufficient capital, in Mr. Smithson’s eyes, to obtain his daughter? I think he has too much sense to imagine anything so absurd; especially to give it a serious thought.”
“But if he hoped to please me by this means?... to win my esteem, my good will, my affection?...”
“All romance that, my dear.”