‘I don’t want a man in armour, Uncle Michel.’

’No, I daresay not.  But the truth is, you don’t know what you want.  The proper thing for a young woman is to get herself well settled, if she has the opportunity.  There are people who think so much of money, that they’d give a child almost to anybody as long as he was rich.  I shouldn’t like to see you marry a man as old as myself.’

‘I shouldn’t care how old he was if I loved him.’

‘Nor to a curmudgeon,’ continued Michel, not caring to notice the interruption, ’nor to an ill-tempered fellow, or one who gambled, or one who would use bad words to you.  But here is a young man who has no faults at all.’

‘I hate people who have no faults,’ said Marie.

’Now you must give him an answer to-day or to-morrow.  You remember what you promised me when we were coming home the other day.’  Marie remembered her promise very well, and thought that a great deal more had been made of it than justice would have permitted.  ’I don’t want to hurry you at all, only it makes me so sad at heart when my own girl won’t come and say a kind word to me and give me a kiss before we part at night.  I thought so much of that last night, Marie, I couldn’t sleep for thinking of it.’  On hearing this, she flung her arms round his neck and kissed him on each cheek and on his lips.  ’I get to feel so, Marie, if there’s anything wrong between you and me, that I don’t know what I’m doing.  Will you do this for me, my dear?  Come and sit at table with us this evening, and make one of us.  At any rate, come and show that we don’t want to make a servant of you.  Then we’ll put off the rest of it till to-morrow.’  When such a request was made to her in such words, how could she not accede to it?  She had no alternative but to say that she would do in this respect as he would have her.  She smiled, and nodded her head, and kissed him again.  ’And, Marie darling, put on a pretty frock,—­for my sake.  I like to see you gay and pretty.’  Again she nodded her head, and again she kissed him.  Such requests, so made, she felt that it would be impossible she should refuse.

And yet when she came to think of it as she went about the house alone, the granting of such requests was in fact yielding in everything.  If she made herself smart for this young man, and sat next him, and smiled, and talked to him, conscious as she would be—­ and he would be also—­that she was so placed that she might become his wife, how afterwards could she hold her ground?  And if she were really resolute to hold her ground, would it not be much better that she should do so by giving up no point, even though her uncle’s anger should rise hot against her?  But now she had promised her uncle, and she knew that she could not go back from her word.  It would be better for her, she told herself, to think no more about it.  Things must arrange themselves.  What did it matter whether she were wretched at Basle or wretched at Granpere?  The only thing that could give a charm to her life was altogether out of her reach.