“But there are questions involved which can only be settled after inspection of the localities,” said the Vicar-General.

“Girardet can go,” said Savarus.  “I cannot allow myself, in the face of a town I know so well, to take any step which might compromise the supreme interests that lie beyond my election.”

The Abbe left Savarus after giving him a keen look, in which he seemed to be laughing at the young athlete’s uncompromising politics, while admiring his firmness.

“Ah!  I would have dragged my father into a lawsuit—­I would have done anything to get him here!” cried Rosalie to herself, standing in the kiosk and looking at the lawyer in his room, the day after Albert’s interview with the Abbe, who had reported the result to her father.  “I would have committed any mortal sin, and you will not enter the Wattevilles’ drawing-room; I may not hear your fine voice!  You make conditions when your help is required by the Wattevilles and the Rupts!—­Well, God knows, I meant to be content with these small joys; with seeing you, hearing you speak, going with you to les Rouxey, that your presence might to me make the place sacred.  That was all I asked.  But now—­now I mean to be your wife.—­Yes, yes; look at her portrait, at her drawing-room, her bedroom, at the four sides of her villa, the points of view from her gardens.  You expect her statue?  I will make her marble herself towards you!—­After all, the woman does not love.  Art, science, books, singing, music, have absorbed half her senses and her intelligence.  She is old, too; she is past thirty; my Albert will not be happy!”

“What is the matter that you stay here, Rosalie?” asked her mother, interrupting her reflections.  “Monsieur de Soulas is in the drawing-room, and he observed your attitude, which certainly betrays more thoughtfulness than is due at your age.”

“Then, is Monsieur de Soulas a foe to thought?” asked Rosalie.

“Then you were thinking?” said Madame de Watteville.

“Why, yes, mamma.”

“Why, no! you were not thinking.  You were staring at that lawyer’s window with an attention that is neither becoming, nor decent, and which Monsieur de Soulas, of all men, ought never to have observed.”

“Why?” said Rosalie.

“It is time,” said the Baroness, “that you should know what our intentions are.  Amedee likes you, and you will not be unhappy as Comtesse de Soulas.”

Rosalie, as white as a lily, made no reply, so completely was she stupefied by contending feelings.  And yet in the presence of the man she had this instant begun to hate vehemently, she forced the kind of smile which a ballet-dancer puts on for the public.  Nay, she could even laugh; she had the strength to conceal her rage, which presently subsided, for she was determined to make use of this fat simpleton to further her designs.

“Monsieur Amedee,” said she, at the moment when her mother was walking ahead of them in the garden, affecting to leave the young people together, “were you not aware that Monsieur Albert Savaron de Savarus is a Legitimist?”