During the remainder of the day on which George had left Granpere, the hours did not fly very pleasantly at the Lion d’Or. Michel Voss had gone to his niece immediately upon his return from his walk, intending to obtain a renewed pledge from her that she would be true to her engagement. But he had been so full of passion, so beside himself with excitement, so disturbed by all that he had heard, that he had hardly waited with Marie long enough to obtain such pledge, or to learn from her that she refused to give it. He had only been able to tell her that if she hesitated about marrying Adrian she should never look upon his face again; and then without staying for a reply he had left her. He had been in such a tremor of passion that he had been unable to demand an answer. After that, when George was gone, he kept away from her during the remainder of the morning. Once or twice he said a few words to his wife, and she counselled him to take no farther outward notice of anything that George had said to him. ‘It will all come right if you will only be a little calm with her,’ Madame Voss had said. He had tossed his head and declared that he was calm;— the calmest man in all Lorraine. Then he had come to his wife again, and she had again given him some good practical advice. ‘Don’t put it into her head that there is to be a doubt,’ said Madame Voss.

‘I haven’t put it into her head,’ he answered angrily.

‘No, my dear, no; but do not allow her to suppose that anybody else can put it there either. Let the matter go on. She will see the things bought for her wedding, and when she remembers that she has allowed them to come into the house without remonstrating, she will be quite unable to object. Don’t give her an opportunity of objecting.’ Michel Voss again shook his head, as though his wife were an unreasonable woman, and swore that it was not he who had given Marie such opportunity. But he made up his mind to do as his wife recommended. ‘Speak softly to her, my dear,’ said Madame Voss.

‘Don’t I always speak softly?’ said he, turning sharply round upon his spouse.

He made his attempt to speak softly when he met Marie about the house just before supper. He put his hand upon her shoulder, and smiled, and murmured some word of love. He was by no means crafty in what he did. Craft indeed was not the strong point of his character. She took his rough hand and kissed it, and looked up lovingly, beseechingly into his face. She knew that he was asking her to consent to the sacrifice, and he knew that she was imploring him to spare her. This was not what Madame Voss had meant by speaking softly. Could she have been allowed to dilate upon her own convictions, or had she been able adequately to express her own ideas, she would have begged that there might be no sentiment, no romance, no kissing of hands, no looking into each other’s faces,— no half-murmured tones of love. Madame Voss believed strongly that the every-day work of the world was done better without any of these glancings and glimmerings of moonshine. But then her husband was, by nature, of a fervid temperament, given to the influence of unexpressed poetic emotions;— and thus subject, in spite of the strength of his will, to much weakness of purpose. Madame Voss perhaps condemned her husband in this matter the more because his romantic disposition never showed itself in his intercourse with her. He would kiss Marie’s hand, and press Marie’s wrist, and hold dialogues by the eye with Marie. But with his wife his speech was,- -not exactly yea, yea, and nay, nay,— but yes, yes, and no, no. It was not unnatural therefore that she should specially dislike this weakness of his which came from his emotional temperament. ‘I would just let things go, as though there were nothing special at all,’ she said again to him, before supper, in a whisper.

‘And so I do. What would you have me say?’

‘Don’t mind petting her, but just be as you would be any other day.’

‘I am as I would be any other day,’ he replied. However, he knew that his wife was right, and was in a certain way aware that if he could only change himself and be another sort of man, he might manage the matter better. He could be fiercely angry, or caressingly affectionate. But he was unable to adopt that safe and golden mean, which his wife recommended. He could not keep himself from interchanging a piteous glance or two with Marie at supper, and put a great deal too much unction into his caress to please Madame Voss, when Marie came to kiss him before she went to bed.

In the mean time Marie was quite aware that it was incumbent on her to determine what she would do. It may be as well to declare at once that she had determined — had determined fully, before her uncle and George had started for their walk up to the wood-cutting. When she was giving them their breakfast that morning her mind was fully made up. She had had the night to lie awake upon it, to think it over, and to realise all that George had told her. It had come to her as quite a new thing that the man whom she worshipped, worshipped her too. While she believed that nobody else loved her;- -when she could tell herself that her fate was nothing to anybody;— as long as it had seemed to her that the world for her must be cold, and hard, and material;— so long could she reconcile to herself, after some painful, dubious fashion, the idea of being the wife either of Adrian Urmand, or of any other man. Some kind of servitude was needful, and if her uncle was decided that she must be banished from his house, the kind of servitude which was proposed to her at Basle would do as well as another. But when she had learned the truth,— a truth so unexpected,— then such servitude became impossible to her. On that morning, when she came down to give the men their breakfast, she had quite determined that let the consequences be what they might she would never become the wife of Adrian Urmand. Madame Voss had told her husband that when Marie saw the things purchased for her wedding coming into the house, the very feeling that the goods had been bought would bind her to her engagement. Marie had thought of that also, and was aware that she must lose no time in making her purpose known, so that articles which would be unnecessary might not be purchased. On that very morning, while the men had been up in the mountain, she had sat with her aunt hemming sheets;— intended as an addition to the already overflowing stock possessed by M. Urmand. It was with difficulty that she had brought herself to do that,— telling herself, however, that as the linen was there, it must be hemmed; when there had come a question of marking the sheets, she had evaded the task,— not without raising suspicion in the bosom of Madame Voss.

But it was, as she knew, absolutely necessary that her uncle should be informed of her purpose. When he had come to her after the walk, and demanded of her whether she still intended to marry Adrian Urmand, she had answered him falsely. ‘I suppose so,’ she had said. The question — such a question as it was — had been put to her too abruptly to admit of a true answer on the spur of the moment. But the falsehood almost stuck in her throat and was a misery to her till she could set it right by a clear declaration of the truth. She had yet to determine what she would do;— how she would tell this truth; in what way she would insure to herself the power of carrying out her purpose. Her mind, the reader must remember, was somewhat dark in the matter. She was betrothed to the man, and she had always heard that a betrothal was half a marriage. And yet she knew of instances in which marriages had been broken off after betrothal quite as ceremonious as her own — had been broken off without scandal or special censure from the Church. Her aunt, indeed, and M. le Cure had, ever since the plighting of her troth to M. Urmand, spoken of the matter in her presence, as though the wedding were a thing already nearly done;— not suggesting by the tenor of their speech that any one could wish in any case to make a change, but pointing out incidentally that any change was now out of the question. But Marie had been sharp enough to understand perfectly the gist of her aunt’s manoeuvres and of the priest’s incidental information. The thing could be done, she know; and she feared no one in the doing of it,— except her uncle. But she did fear that if she simply told him that it must be done, he would have such a power over her that she would not succeed. In what way could she do it first, and then tell him afterwards?

At last she determined that she would write a letter to M. Urmand, and show a copy of the letter to her uncle when the post should have taken it so far out of Granpere on its way to Basle............