At midnight, the newly married couple having discreetly disappeared, the Marchioness signified to her son that she was tired and would like to withdraw. "Give me your arm, dear child," said she, when he came to her side; "let us not disturb Caroline, who is dancing; I will leave her under the protection of Madame de D——."  
And as the Marquis was helping her through the corridor leading to her own room on the lower floor,—they had been considerate enough to humor her distrust of staircases, "My dear son," she said, "you will no longer have the trouble of carrying on your arm your poor little bundle of a mother. You did it very often when you were with us at the other house, and with you I did not seem afraid; but it pained me to give you the trouble."
 
"And I—I shall regret that lost pleasure," said Urbain.
 
"How elegant and aristocratic this reception is!" resumed the Marchioness, having at last reached her apartment; "and this Caroline who is its queen! I am astonished at the beauty and grace the little creature has."
 
"Mother," said the Marquis, "are you really very tired just now? and if I should ask fifteen minutes' conversation with you—"
 
"Let us talk, my son, by all means!" cried the Marchioness. "I was tired only because I could not talk with those I love. And then I was afraid of seeming ridiculous, in case I said too much about my happiness. Let us speak of it, let us speak of your brother, and of yourself as well! Come, will you not bring a second day like this into my life?"
 
"Dear mother," said the Marquis, kneeling before her and taking both her hands in his, "it depends upon you alone whether I, too, shall soon have my day of supreme joy."
 
"Ah! what do you say? Truly? Tell me quickly then!"
 
"Yes, I will speak. This is the moment I was waiting for; I have held myself in reserve, and turned all my longings toward this blessed hour, when my brother, reconciled to God, to truth, and to himself, could take a wife worthy to be your daughter. And when such a moment came I intended to say this: Mother, I also can present you with a second daughter, more lovely than the first and no less pure. For a year, for more than a year, I have devotedly loved a most perfect being. She has suspected this perhaps, but she does not know it; I have so much respect and esteem for her that without your consent I well knew I should never gain her own. Besides, she gave me to understand this sharply one day, one single day, when my secret came near escaping me in spite of myself, four months ago, and I have since kept strict silence in her presence and in yours. It was my duty not to plunge you into anxieties which, thank God! no longer exist. Your fate, my brother's, and my own are henceforth secure. Now, comfortably rich, I may properly refuse to enlarge my fortune, and I can marry according to my inclinations. You have a sacrifice to make for me nevertheless; but your motherly love will not refuse, for it involves the happiness of my whole life. This lady belongs to an honorable family; you made sure of this yourself before you admitted her to intimacy with you; but she does not belong to one of those ancient and illustrious lines, for which you have a preference that I do not mean to oppose. I said you would have to make a sacrifice for me; will you do it? Do you love me enough? Yes, mother, yes, your heart, which I can feel beating, will yield without regret, in its vast maternal tenderness, to the prayer of a son who worships you."
 
"Ah, bless me! you are speaking of Caroline," cried the Marchioness, trembling. "Stop, stop, my son! The shock is rude, and I was not prepared for it."
 
"O, do not say that!" resumed the Marquis, warmly; "if the shock is too rude, I do not want you to bear it. I will give it all up; I will never marry—"
 
"Never marry! Why, that would be worse still! Come, come, do let me know where I am! It is, perhaps, easier to bear than it seems. It is not so much her birth. Her father was knighted: that's nothing very great; but if that was really all! There is this poverty which has fallen upon her. You may tell me that but for you I should have fallen into it myself; but I should have died, while she—she has courage to work for a living, and to accept a kind of domestic service—"
 
"Heavens!" cried the Marquis, "would you make a blemish of what is the crowning merit of her life?"
 
"No, no, not I," returned the Marchioness, eagerly, "quite the contrary; but the world is so—"
 
"So unjust and so blind!"
 
"That is true too, and I was wrong to let it influence me. Come! we are in the midst of love-matches, so I have only one more objection to make. Caroline is twenty-five years old—"
 
"And I am now over thirty-four myself."
 
"It is not that. She is young enough, if her heart is as pure, as unsophisticated as your own; but she has been in love before."
 
"No. I know her whole life. I have conversed with her sister; she was to have married, but she has never really loved."
 
"Still, between this projected marriage and the time when she came to us some years must have elapsed—"
 
"I have inquired about this. I know her life day by day and almost hour by hour. If I tell you that Mlle de Saint-Geneix is worthy of you and of me, it is because I know it. A foolish passion has not blinded me. No, a serious love based upon reflection, upon comparison with all other women, upon certainty, has given me strength to keep silence and to wait, wishing to convince you on good grounds."
 
The Marquis talked with his mother some time longer, and he triumphed. He used all the eloquence of passion, and all that filial tenderness of which he had given so many proofs. His mother was touched and yielded.
 
"Well, now," cried the Marquis, "will you let me call her here on your behalf? Are you willing that, for the first time,—in your presence, at your feet,—I should tell her that I love her? See, I yet dare not tell her alone! One cold look, one word of distrust, would break my heart. Here, in your presence, I can speak, I will convince her."
 
"My son," said the Marchioness, "you have my promise. And you see," added she, taking him in her feeble arms, "if I have not given it with very impulsive joy, it is at least with tenderness unlimited and unalloyed. I ask, I exact one single thing; that is, that you will take twenty-four hours to reflect upon your position. It is new, for here you are in possession of my consent, which you thought more than doubtful an hour ago. Up to that time you believed yourself parted from Mlle de Saint-Geneix by obstacles that you did not think of overcoming so easily, perhaps, and this may have given illusive strength to your feelings for her. Don't shake your head! What do you know about it yourself? Besides, what I ask is a very little thing,—twenty-four hours without speaking to her, that is all. For myself, I feel the need of accepting completely before God the decision I have just reached; that my face, my agitation, my tears, may not lead Caroline to suspect that it has cost me something—"
 
"O yes, you are right," exclaimed the Marquis. "If she suspected that, she never would let me speak to her. To-morrow, then, dear mother. Twenty-four hours, did you say? It is very long! And then,—it is one o'clock in the morning. Will you be up again to-morrow night?"
 
"Yes, for we have a concert to-morrow at the apartments of the young Duchess. You see why we must sleep to-night. Are you going back to the ball-room?"
 
"Ah! please let me: she is there still, and she is so lovely with her white dress and the pearls. I have not looked at her enough, really. I did not dare—now only shall I truly see her."
 
"Well! make this sacrifice for me in your turn, not to look at her again,—not to speak to her before to-morrow evening. Promise me, as you have no idea of sleeping, to think of her, of me, and of yourself, all alone, for a few hours, and then again to-morrow morning. You are not to come here before dinner-time. You must not; promise me!"
 
The Marquis promised and kept his word; but the solitude, the darkness, the pain of not seeing Caroline, and of leaving her surrounded by the notice and homage of others, only increased his impatience, only fed the fire of his passion. Besides, his mother's precautions, although wise in themselves, were of no use to a man who had been reflecting and deciding so long.
 
Caroline was surprised not to see the Marquis reappear, and was one of the first to withdraw,—trying to persuade herself she had not been mistaken in thinking he would soon recover his self-control. She was, as will be seen, far from suspecting the truth.
 
Madame d'Arglade had her spies at this ball, and among others a man who desired to marry her, a secretary of legation, who, the next morning, reported to her the great success of the "young lady companion." The devotion of the Marquis had not escaped malevolent eyes, and the diplomatic apprentice had even scented out an interesting conversation between the Marquis and his mother, as they left the room together.
 
Léonie listened to this report with apparent indifference; but she said to herself it was time to act, and at noon she was inquiring for the Marchioness at the very moment Caroline appeared.
 
"One minute, my dear friend," said she to Mlle de Saint-Geneix, "let me go in before you do; it is an urgent matter,—a kindness to be done for some poor people who wish to remain unknown."
 
Once alone with the Marchioness, she apologized for coming to speak about the poor in these days of rejoicing. "They are, on the contrary, the days of the poor," replied the generous lady; "speak. One of my great joys now will be that I can do more good than I could awhile ago."
 
Léonie had her pretext all prepared. When she had presented her request, and put the Marchioness down on her subscription-list, she pretended that she was in haste to go, so as to be invited to stay a little while. It is useless to relate the skilful turns and tricks by which she maliciously contrived to reach the interesting point of the conversation. These mean-spirited attacks, unhappily too common, will be remembered by all those who have ever felt their cruel effects; and they are very few who have been forgotten by calumny.
 
They naturally s............