“Now, we are going to the gentleman’s box at the Opera to-night, and M. le Baron de Macumer will visit us there.”

“Macumer needs a touch of the spur then,” said my father, smiling at me, as though I were a female ambassador.

“You mistake Clarissa Harlowe for Figaro!” I cried, with a glance of scorn and mockery.  “When you see me with my right hand ungloved, you will give the lie to this impertinent gossip, and will mark your displeasure at it.”

“I may make my mind easy about your future.  You have no more got a girl’s headpiece than Jeanne d’Arc had a woman’s heart.  You will be happy, you will love nobody, and will allow yourself to be loved.”

This was too much.  I burst into laughter.

“What is it, little flirt?” he said.

“I tremble for my country’s interests . . .”

And seeing him look quite blank, I added: 

“At Madrid!”

“You have no idea how this little nun has learned, in a year’s time, to make fun of her father,” he said to the Duchess.

“Armande makes light of everything,” my mother replied, looking me in the face.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Why, you are not even afraid of rheumatism on these damp nights,” she said, with another meaning glance at me.

“Oh!” I answered, “the mornings are so hot!”

The Duchess looked down.

“It’s high time she were married,” said my father, “and it had better be before I go.”

“If you wish it,” I replied demurely.

Two hours later, my mother and I, the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse and Mme. d’Espard, were all four blooming like roses in the front of the box.  I had seated myself sideways, giving only a shoulder to the house, so that I could see everything, myself unseen, in that spacious box which fills one of the two angles at the back of the hall, between the columns.

Macumer came, stood up, and put his opera-glasses before his eyes so that he might be able to look at me comfortably.

In the first interval entered the young man whom I call “king of the profligates.”  The Comte Henri de Marsay, who has great beauty of an effeminate kind, entered the box with an epigram in his eyes, a smile upon his lips, and an air of satisfaction over his whole countenance.  He first greeted my mother, Mme. d’Espard, and the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse, the Comte d’Esgrignon, and M. de Canalis; then turning to me, he said: 

“I do not know whether I shall be the first to congratulate you on an event which will make you the object of envy to many.”

“Ah! a marriage!” I cried.  “Is it left for me, a girl fresh from the convent, to tell you that predicted marriages never come off.”

M. de Marsay bent down, whispering to Macumer, and I was convinced, from the movement of his lips, that what he said was this: 

“Baron, you are perhaps in love with that little coquette, who has used you for her own ends; but as the question is one not of love, but of marriage, it is as well for you to know what is going on.”