“I’ll wait, then—­”

“Yes, do.  So last spring I began my first campaign.  I do not know, Aunt Louise, what the customs were in your time, but I know that to-day, at the present time, the condition of young girls is one of extreme severity.  We are kept confined, closely confined, till eighteen, for mamma was very indulgent in bringing me out when I was only seventeen; but mamma is goodness itself, and then she isn’t coquettish for a sou—­she didn’t mind admitting that she had a marriageable daughter.  All mothers are not like that, and I know some who are glad to put off the public and official exhibition of their poor children so as to gain a year.  At the same time that they race at Longchamps and Chantilly the great fillies of the year, they take from their boxes the great heiresses of the year who are ripe for matrimony, and in a series of white balls given for that purpose, between Easter Sunday and the Grand Prix, they are made to take little trial gallops before connoisseurs.  They have to work rapidly and find a buyer before the Grand Prix; for after that all is up, the young girls are packed back to their governesses, dancing-masters, and literary professors.  The campaign is over.  That is all for the year.  They are not seen again, the poor things, till after Lent.  So mamma took me last year to a dozen large balls, which were sad and sorrowful for me.  He was not there!  He didn’t wish to marry!  He told it to every one insolently, satirically.  He would never, never, never marry!  He told it to me.”

“At your mother’s request.”

“Yes, that is true.  I know since that it was at mamma’s petition that he talked that way; she hoped it would prevent my being stubborn in my craze for him.”

“Craze!” exclaimed Aunt Louise.

“Excuse me, Aunt Louise, it is a word of to-day.”

“And means—­”

“It means a sort of unexplainable, absurd, and extravagant love that comes without its being possible to know why—­in short, Aunt Louise, exactly the love I have for him.”

“Much obliged!  But you do not tell everything.  You do not say that your mother desired your marriage with Courtalin—­”

“Yes, of course; mamma was quite right.  M. de Courtalin has a thousand sterling merits that you have not—­that you will never have; and then M. de Courtalin had a particularly good point in mamma’s eyes:  he did not find me too thin, and he asked for my hand in marriage.  One day about four o’clock (that was the 2d of June last year) mamma came into my room with an expression on her face I had never seen before.  ‘My child,’ she said—­’my dear child!’ She had no need to finish; I had understood.  M. de Courtalin all the evening before, at the Princess de Viran’s, had hovered about me, and the next day his mother had come to declare to mamma that her son knew of nothing more delightful than my face.  I answered that I knew of nothing less delightful than M. de Courtalin’s face.  I added that,