“I know that only too well,” replied the countess; “on the contrary, every one in your family seems to study how to defeat my efforts in that direction.  However, one thing is clear in spite of the reserve, and, you must allow me to say so, the clumsiness in which the affair has been managed, and that is that the young people love each other, and they will both be unhappy if they do not marry.  Now, to prevent this catastrophe is the object with which I have come here this morning.”

“We cannot, madame, be otherwise than deeply sensible of the interest you are so good as to show in the happiness of our son,” said Phellion; “but, in truth, this interest—­”

“Is something so inexplicable,” interrupted the countess, “that you feel a distrust of it?”

“Oh! madame!” said Phellion, bowing with an air of respectful dissent.

“But,” continued the lady, “the explanation of my proceeding is very simple.  I have studied Celeste, and in that dear and artless child I find a moral weight and value which would make me grieve to see her sacrificed.”

“You are right, madame,” said Madame Phellion.  “Celeste is, indeed, an angel of sweetness.”

“As for monsieur Felix, I venture to interest myself because, in the first place, he is the son of so virtuous a father—­”

“Oh, madame!  I entreat—­” said Phellion, bowing again.

“—­and he also attracts me by the awkwardness of true love, which appears in all his actions and all his words.  We mature women find an inexpressible charm in seeing the tender passion under a form which threatens us with no deceptions and no misunderstandings.”

“My son is certainly not brilliant,” said Madame Phellion, with a faint tone of sharpness; “he is not a fashionable young man.”

“But he has the qualities that are most essential,” replied the countess, “and a merit which ignores itself,—­a thing of the utmost consequence in all intellectual superiority—­”

“Really, madame,” said Phellion, “you force us to hear things that—­”

“That are not beyond the truth,” interrupted the countess.  “Another reason which leads me to take a deep interest in the happiness of these young people is that I am not so desirous for that of Monsieur Theodose de la Peyrade, who is false and grasping.  On the ruin of their hopes that man is counting to carry out his swindling purposes.”

“It is quite certain,” said Phellion, “that there are dark depths in Monsieur de la Peyrade where light does not penetrate.”

“And as I myself had the misfortune to marry a man of his description, the thought of the wretchedness to which Celeste would be condemned by so fatal a connection, impels me, in the hope of saving her, to the charitable effort which now, I trust, has ceased to surprise you.”

“Madame,” said Phellion, “we do not need the conclusive explanations by which you illumine your conduct; but as to the faults on our part, which have thwarted your generous efforts, I must declare that in order to avoid committing them in future, it seems to me not a little desirable that you should plainly indicate them.”