‘And where is Marie?’ Michel asked.

An answer came from some one that Marie was upstairs.  Supper would soon be ready, and Marie was busy.  Then Michel sent up an order by Peter that Marie should come down.  But Marie did not come down.  ‘She had gone to her own room,’ Peter said.  Then there came a frown on Michel’s brow.  Marie had promised to try, and this was not trying.  He said no more till they went up to supper.  There was Marie standing as usual at the soup tureen.  Urmand walked up to her, and they touched each other’s hand; but Marie said never a word.  The frown on Michel’s brow was very black, but Marie went on dispensing her soup.

CHAPTER VII.

Adrian Urmand, in spite of his white hands and his well-combed locks and the silk lining to his coat, had so much of the spirit of a man that he was minded to hold his head well up before the girl whom he wished to make his wife.  Michel during that drive from Remiremont had told him that he might probably prevail.  Michel had said a thousand things in favour of his niece and not a word to her prejudice; but he had so spoken, or had endeavoured so to speak, as to make Urmand understand that Marie could only be won with difficulty, and that she was perhaps unaccountably averse to the idea of matrimony.  ’She is like a young filly, you know, that starts and plunges when she is touched,’ he had said.  ’You think there is nobody else?’ Urmand had asked.  Then Michel Voss had answered with confidence, ‘I am sure there is nobody else.’  Urmand had listened and said very little; but when at supper he saw that the uncle was ruffled in his temper and sat silent with a black brow, that Madame Voss was troubled in spirit, and that Marie dispensed her soup without vouchsafing a look to any one, he felt that it behoved him to do his best, and he did it.  He talked freely to Madame Voss, telling her the news from Basle,—­how at length he thought the French trade was reviving, and how all the Swiss authorities were still opposed to the German occupation of Alsace; and how flax was likely to be dearer than ever he had seen it; and how the travelling English were fewer this year than usual, to the great detriment of the innkeepers.  Every now and then he would say a word to Marie herself, as she passed near him, speaking in a cheery tone and striving his best to dispel a black silence which on the present occasion would have been specially lugubrious.  Upon the whole he did his work well, and Michel Voss was aware of it; but Marie Bromar entertained no gentle thought respecting him.  He was not wanted there, and he ought not to have come.  She had given him an answer, and he ought to have taken it.  Nothing, she declared to herself, was meaner than a man who would go to a girl’s parents or guardians for support, when the girl herself had told him that she wished to have nothing to do with him.  Marie had promised that she would try, but every feeling of her heart was against the struggle.