The Marchioness slept little. Her impatience for the morrow almost stifled her. Want of sleep took away her spirits. She viewed everything on its dark side, and expected to find the whole a delusion; but when Caroline brought in her correspondence, there was a letter from the Duchess that transported her with joy. "My friend," said Madame de Dunières, "here is a change of scene like those at the opera. It is the case of your eldest son that demands attention. I talked with Diana when she awoke this morning. I did not asperse the Duke, but my religion obliged me not to hide from her any of the truth. She replied that I had said all this before, in speaking of the Marquis, that I had nothing to tell her which she had not already considered, and that on mature reflection, she had become equally interested in the two brothers, whose friendship was such a beautiful thing, and that, in thinking over the position of the Duke, she had found it more meritorious to have borne the burden of gratitude nobly than to have rendered a service exacted by duty." She added that, "Since I had counselled her to bestow happiness and wealth on some worthy man, she felt herself drawn toward him who pleased her best. In fine, the irresistible graces of your good-for-nothing son have done the rest. And then I must not be mistaken about Diana. She judges that the title of Duchess will suit her queenly figure best: she is inclined to be fond of society; and when, not long ago, some one, I know not who, told her that the Marquis did not like it at all, I saw she was uneasy, though I did not know the reason. Now she has confessed all. She has said to me that as a brother the Marquis would be all she could desire, but that as a husband the Duke would show her the gayest life. In short, my dear, she seems so determined that I have only to serve you all I can in this unforeseen contingency as I should have done in the other case.
"I will bring my daughter to you to-morrow morning, and as Diana will be with us, you can see her without appearing to suspect anything; but you will succeed in charming her completely, I am very sure."
While the Marchioness and the Duke were giving themselves up to their happiness, Caroline was left a little more alone; for the son and the mother held long conversations every day in which her presence was naturally undesired, and during which she practised music or wrote her own letters in the drawing-room, always deserted until five o'clock. There she disturbed no one, and held herself in readiness to answer the least summons of the Marchioness.
One day the Marquis came in with a book, and seating himself at the same table where she was writing, with an air strangely calm and resolved, asked her permission to work in this room, where it was easier to breathe than in his little chamber. "That is, on condition," said he, "that I don't drive you away, for I see quite clearly that you have avoided me for some days past; don't deny it!" added he, seeing she was about to reply. "You have reasons for this which I respect, but which are not well grounded. In speaking of myself as I ventured to do at the Jardin des Plantes I startled the delicacy of your conscience. You thought I was going to make you my confidante in some personal project likely to disturb the peace of my family, and you were unwilling to become even a passive accomplice in my rebellion."
"Exactly so," replied Caroline, "you have divined my feeling perfectly."
"Now let my words become as if they had never been said," continued Urbain, calmly and with a firmness that commanded, respect; "I will not tell you to forget them, but do not dwell on them in any way, I beg, and never fear my bringing your attachment for my mother into collision with the generous friendship you have deigned to accord me."
Caroline felt constrained to yield to the power of this frankness. She did not comprehend all that was passing through the mind of the Marquis, all that was suppressed behind his words. She thought she must have been mistaken, that she had felt too much alarm at a fancy he had already conquered. In her own mind she accepted her friend's promise as a formal reparation for having caused her a moment of troubled thought, and thenceforth she found anew the full charm and security of friendship.
They saw each other, then, every day, and even sometimes for long hours together, in the drawing-room, almost under the eyes of the Marchioness, who rejoiced to see that Caroline continued to aid the Marquis in his labors. In fact, she assisted him now only with her memory: having arranged his documents in the country, he wrote his third and last volume with admirable swiftness and readiness. Caroline's presence gave him enthusiasm and inspiration. By her side, he no longer suffered from doubt or weariness. She had become so indispensable to him that he confessed his lack of interest in anything when alone. He was pleased to have her talk to him even in the midst of his work. Far from disturbing him this dearly loved voice preserved the harmony of his thought and the elevation of his style. He challenged her to disturb him, he begged her to read music at the piano, without fear of causing him the least annoyance. On the contrary, all that made him sensible of her presence fell on his soul like a pleasant warmth; for she was to him, not another person moving about near him, but his own mind which he could see and feel alive before him.
Her respect for his work, over which she was enthusiastic, bound Caroline to a certain respect for him personally. She made it a sacred duty, as it were, not, in any way, to disturb the balance needful to a mind so finely organized. She refused to think of herself any longer. She no longer asked herself whether she was not running some risk on her own score, or whether, at a given time, she would be strong enough to give up this intimacy which was becoming the groundwork of her own life.
The matrimonial alliance between the Duke d'Aléria and Mlle de Xaintrailles progressed with encouraging rapidity. The beautiful Diana was seriously in love and would not hear a word against Gaëtan. The Duchess de Dunières, having herself made a love-match with a veteran lady-killer, who had reformed on the strength of it and now rendered her perfectly happy, took the part of her god-daughter, and pleaded her cause so well that her guardians and the legal advisers of the family had to give way before the known will of the heiress.
The latter told her betrothed, even before he had expressed any wish to this effect, that she intended to pay off his indebtedness to the Marquis, and the Marquis had to accept the promise of a reparation which this high-minded young girl made one condition of the marriage. All the Marquis could obtain was that they should not restore to him the share in his mother's property which he had resigned when Madame de Villemer had been obliged to pay the debts of her eldest son for the first time. According to the Marquis, his mother had a right to dispose of her own fortune during her lifetime; and he regarded himself as entirely indemnified since the Marchioness was to live henceforth at the Hôtel de Xaintrailles and in the castles of her daughter-in-law, far more splendid than the little manor of Séval and much nearer Paris, thus living no longer at his expense.
In these family arrangements all parties showed the most exquisite delicacy and the most honorable generosity. Caroline directed the attention of the Marquis to this fact in order to make him insist, in his book, upon certain just reservations in favor of families where the true idea of nobility still served as the basis of real virtues.
In fact, here each one did his duty: Mlle de Xaintrailles would have no marriage-contract which, in protecting her fortune from her husband's lavish expenditures, should contain any clauses likely to wound his pride; while the Duke, on the other hand, insisted that the right of dowry should bind the wings of his magnificent improvidence. So it was specified with considerable flourish in the document that this stipulation was introduced at the request of the future bridegroom, and in compliance with his express wishes.
Everything being thus settled, the Marchioness found herself a sharer in a most generous style of living; and although she had declared herself satisfied with a simple promise and willing to rely on the discretion of her children, a very handsome income had been secured to her by the same contract in which the future bride had done so many other liberal and considerate things; the Marquis, on his side, became repossessed of capital enough to represent an ample competence. It is needless to state that he took the recovery of this fortune as calmly as he had borne the loss of it.
While the outfit of the bride was preparing, the Duke busied himself about his presents for her, the funds for their purchase having been forced upon his acceptance by his brother, as a wedding gift. What an affair it was for the Duke to choose diamonds and laces and cashmeres! He understood the lofty science of the toilet better than the most accomplished woman. He hardly found time to eat, passing his days in waiting upon his betrothed, consulting jewellers, merchants, and embroiderers, and telling his mother, who was equally excited over it all, the thousand incidents and even the surprising dramas connected with his marvellous acquisitions. Into the midst of all this heavy fire, in which Caroline and Urbain took only a modest share, Madame d'Arglade glided, as if in her own despite.
A great event had overturned Léonie's way of life and all her plans. At the beginning of the winter, her husband, twenty years her senior and for some time past an invalid, had succumbed to a chronic disease, leaving his affairs complicated enough; though she came out of her embarrassments in triumphant style, thanks to a lucky stroke at the Bourse, for she had gambled in stocks a long time without the knowledge of M. d'Arglade, and had at last laid hands on a fortunate number in the great lottery. So she found herself a widow, still young and handsome, and richer than she had ever been before, all which did not hinder her shedding so many and such big tears that people said of her with admiration, "This poor little woman was really attached to her duty, in spite of her frivolous ways! Certainly M. d'Arglade was not a husband to go distracted over, but she has such a warm heart that she is inconsolable." And thus she was pitied, and many took pains to amuse her: the Marchioness, seriously interested, insisted that she should come and pass her solitary afternoons with her. Nothing was more proper; it was not going into company, for the Marchioness received no visitors until four or five o'clock; it was not even going out, for Léonie could come in a cab without much of a toilet, and as if incognito. Léonie allowed herself to be consoled and amused by watching the preparations for the wedding, and sometimes the Duke would succeed in making her laugh outright; which did very well, because, passing from one kind of nervous excitement to another, she would immediately begin to sob, hiding her face in her handkerchief and saying, "How cruel you are to make me laugh! It does me so much harm."
Through all her despair, Léonie was contriving to win the intimate confidence of the Marchioness so as insensibly to supplant Caro............