One evening, when Serge appeared in the little drawing-room of the Rue Saint-Dominique, he found Madame Desvarennes alone.  She looked serious, as if same important business were pending.  She stood before the fireplace; her hands crossed behind her back like a man.  Apparently, she had sought to be alone.  Cayrol, Jeanne, and Micheline were in the garden.  Serge felt uneasy.  He had a presentiment of trouble.  But determined to make the best of it, whatever it might be, he looked pleasant and bowed to Madame Desvarennes, without his face betraying his uneasiness.

“Good-day, Prince; you are early this evening, though not so early as Cayrol; but then he does not quite know what he is doing now.  Sit down, I want to talk to you.  You know that a young lady like Mademoiselle Desvarennes cannot get married without her engagement being much talked about.  Tongues have been very busy, and pens too.  I have heard a lot of scandal and have received heaps of anonymous letters about you.”

Serge gave a start of indignation.

“Don’t be uneasy,” continued the mistress.  “I did not heed the tales, and I burned the letters.  Some said you were a dissolute man, capable of anything to gain your object.  Others insinuated that you were not a Prince, that you were not a Pole, but the son of a Russian coachman and a little dressmaker of Les Ternes; that you had lived at the expense of Mademoiselle Anna Monplaisir, the star of the Varietes Theatre, and that you were bent on marrying to pay your debts with my daughter’s money.”

Panine, pale as death, rose up and said, in a stifled voice: 

“Madame!”

“Sit down, my dear child,” interrupted the mistress.  “If I tell you these things, it is because I have the proofs that they are untrue.  Otherwise, I would not have given myself the trouble to talk to you about them.  I would have shown you the door and there would have been an end of it.  Certainly, you are not an angel; but the peccadillos which you have been guilty of are those which one forgives in a son, and which in a son-in-law makes some mothers smile.  You are a Prince, you are handsome, and you have been loved.  You were then a bachelor; and it was your own affair.  But now, you are going to be, in about ten days, the husband of my daughter, and it is necessary for us to make certain arrangements.  Therefore, I waited to see you, to speak of your wife, of yourself, and of me.”

What Madame Desvarennes had just said relieved Serge of a great weight.  He felt so happy that he resolved to do everything in his power to please the mother of his betrothed.

“Speak, Madame,” he exclaimed.  “I am listening to you with attention and confidence.  I am sure that from you I can only expect goodness and sense.”

The mistress smiled.

“Oh, I know you have a gilt tongue, my handsome friend, but I don’t pay myself with words, and I, am not easy to be wheedled.”