"One mistake you make in the kindness of your heart, for you are a stern man with a soft heart, as many English are--you grieve too much for me. Of course, it is a sorrow--but it is not the great sorrow. You understand?"
"That came to me many years ago, and was not connected with the Vicomte de Clericy, but with one who had no title beyond that of gentleman--and I think there is none higher. It is an old story, and one that is too often enacted in France, where convenience is placed before happiness and money above affection. My life has been, well--happy. Lucille has made it so. And I have an aim in existence which is in itself a happiness--to make Lucille's life a happy one, to ensure her that which I have missed, and to avoid a mistake made by generation after generation of women--namely, to believe that love comes to us after marriage. It never does so, my friend--never. Tolerance may come, or, at the best, affection--which is making an ornament of brass and setting it up where there should be gold--or nothing."
I stood, half turning my back to Madame, looking down into the valley--not caring to meet the quiet eyes that had looked straight into my heart long ago in the room called the boudoir of the house in the Rue des Palmiers, and had ever since read the thoughts and desires which I had hidden from the rest of the world. Madame knew, without any words of mine, that I also had one object in existence, and that the same as hers--namely, that Lucille's life should be a happy one.
"There is no task so difficult," said Madame, half talking, as I thought, to herself, "unless it be undertaken by the one man who can do it without an effort--no task so difficult as that of making a woman happy. Even her mother cannot be sure of the wisdom of interference. I always remember some words of your friend, John Turner, 'When in doubt, do nothing,' and he is a wise man, I think."
The Vicomtesse was an economist of words, and explained herself no further. We remained for some moments in silence, and it was she who at length broke it.
"Thank you," she said, "for all your thought and care in verifying the details of the story you have told me."
"I might have kept it from you, Madame," answered I, "and thus spared you some sorrow. Perhaps you had been happier in ignorance."
