Then the same young lady sitting by an open widow with a view of the sea, had fainted in an arm-chair; a letter she had dropped lay at her feet.  So he is dead!  What despair!

Visitors were generally much moved and charmed by the commonplace pathos of these obvious and sentimental works.  They were at once intelligible without question or explanation, and the poor women were to be pitied, though the nature of the grief of the more elegant of the two was not precisely known.  But this very doubt contributed to the sentiment.  She had, no doubt, lost her lover.  On entering the room the eye was immediately attracted to these four pictures, and riveted as if fascinated.  If it wandered it was only to return and contemplate the four expressions on the faces of the two women, who were as like each other as two sisters.  And the very style of these works, in their shining frames, crisp, sharp, and highly finished, with the elegance of a fashion plate, suggested a sense of cleanliness and propriety which was confirmed by the rest of the fittings.  The seats were always in precisely the same order, some against the wall and some round the circular centre-table.  The immaculately white curtains hung in such straight and regular pleats that one longed to crumple them a little; and never did a grain of dust rest on the shade under which the gilt clock, in the taste of the first empire—­a terrestrial globe supported by Atlas on his knees—­looked like a melon left there to ripen.

The two women as they sat down somewhat altered the normal position of their chairs.

“You have not been out this morning?” asked Mme. Roland.

“No.  I must own to being rather tired.”

And she spoke as if in gratitude to Jean and his mother, of all the pleasure she had derived from the expedition and the prawn-fishing.

“I ate my prawns this morning,” she added, “and they were excellent.  If you felt inclined we might go again one of these days.”

The young man interrupted her: 

“Before we start on a second fishing excursion, suppose we complete the first?”

“Complete it?  It seems to me quite finished.”

“Nay, madame, I, for my part, caught something on the rocks of Saint Jouain which I am anxious to carry home with me.”

She put on an innocent and knowing look.

“You?  What can it be?  What can you have found?”

“A wife.  And my mother and I have come to ask you whether she had changed her mind this morning.”

She smiled:  “No, monsieur.  I never change my mind.”

And then he held out his hand, wide open, and she put hers into it with a quick, determined movement.  Then he said:  “As soon as possible, I hope.”

“As soon as you like.”

“In six weeks?”

“I have no opinion.  What does my future mother-in-law say?”

Mme. Roland replied with a rather melancholy smile: