“God forgive him!” said madame.  And then she hurried on:  “Leave this to me now, Aline.  Be guided by me — oh, be guided by me!” Her tone was beseeching.  “I will take counsel with your uncle Charles.  But do not definitely decide until this unfortunate affair has blown over.  Charles will know how to arrange it.  M. le Marquis shall do penance, child, since your tyranny demands it; but not in sackcloth and ashes.  You’ll not ask so much?”

Aline shrugged.  “I ask nothing at all,” she said, which was neither assent nor dissent.

So Mme. de Sautron interviewed her husband, a slight, middle-aged man, very aristocratic in appearance and gifted with a certain shrewd sense.  She took with him precisely the tone that Aline had taken with herself and which in Aline she had found so disconcertingly indelicate.  She even borrowed several of Aline’s phrases.

The result was that on the Monday afternoon when at last M. de La Tour d’Azyr’s returning berline drove up to the chateau, he was met by M. le Comte de Sautron who desired a word with him even before he changed.

“Gervais, you’re a fool,” was the excellent opening made by M. le Comte.

“Charles, you give me no news,” answered M. le Marquis.  “Of what particular folly do you take the trouble to complain?”

He flung himself wearily upon a sofa, and his long graceful body sprawling there he looked up at his friend with a tired smile on that nobly handsome pale face that seemed to defy the onslaught of age.

“Of your last.  This Binet girl.”

“That!  Pooh!  An incident; hardly a folly.”

“A folly — at such a time,” Sautron insisted.  The Marquis looked a question.  The Count answered it.  “Aline,” said he, pregnantly.  “She knows.  How she knows I can’t tell you, but she knows, and she is deeply offended.”

The smile perished on the Marquis’ face.  He gathered himself up.

“Offended?” said he, and his voice was anxious.

“But yes.  You know what she is.  You know the ideals she has formed.  It wounds her that at such a time — whilst you are here for the purpose of wooing her — you should at the same time be pursuing this affair with that chit of a Binet girl.”

“How do you know?” asked La Tour d’Azyr.

“She has confided in her aunt.  And the poor child seems to have some reason.  She says she will not tolerate that you should come to kiss her hand with lips that are still contaminated from...  Oh, you understand.  You appreciate the impression of such a thing upon a pure, sensitive girl such as Aline.  She said — I had better tell you — that the next time you kiss her hand, she will call for water and wash it in your presence.”

The Marquis’ face flamed scarlet.  He rose.  Knowing his violent, intolerant spirit, M. de Sautron was prepared for an outburst.  But no outburst came.  The Marquis turned away from him, and paced slowly to the window, his head bowed, his hands behind his back.  Halted there he spoke, without turning, his voice was at once scornful and wistful.