This declaration closed the evening. It was getting late. The Saturday guests put on their overcoats; and, as they were walking home, "Can you understand that little Gilberte?" said Mme. Desciavettes.
"I'd like to see a daughter of mine have such fancies! But her poor mother is so weak!"
"Yes; but friend Favoral is firm enough for both," interrupted M.
Desormeaux; "and it is more than probable that at this very moment he is correcting his daughter of the sin of sloth."
Well, not at all. Extremely angry as M. Favoral must have been, neither that evening, nor the next day, did he make the remotest allusion to what had taken place.
The following Monday only, before leaving for his office, casting upon his wife and daughter one of his ugliest looks:
"M. Costeclar owes us a visit," said he; "and it is possible that he may call in my absence. I wish him to be admitted; and I forbid you to go out, so that you can have no pretext to refuse him the door. I presume there will not be found in my house any one bold enough to ill receive a man whom I like, and whom I have selected for my son-in law."
But was it probable, was it even possible, that M. Costeclar could venture upon such a step after Mlle. Gilberte's treatment of him on the previous Saturday evening?
"No, a thousand times no!" affirmed Maxence to his mother and sister.
"So you may rest easy."
Indeed they tried to be, until that very afternoon the sound of rapidly-rolling wheels attracted Mme. Favoral to the window. A coupe, drawn by two gray horses, had just stopped at the door.
"It must be he," she said to her daughter.
Mlle. Gilberte had turned slightly pale.
"There is no help for it, mother," she said: "You must receive him."
"And you?"
I shall remain in my room."
"Do you suppose he won't ask for you?"
"You will answer that I am unwell. He will understand."
"But your father, unhappy child, your father?"
"I do not acknowledge to my father the right of disposing of my person against my wishes. I detest that man to whom he wishes to marry me. Would you like to see me his wife, to know me given up to the most intolerable torture? No, there is no violence in the world that will ever wring my consent from me. So, mother dear, do what I ask you. My father can say what he pleases: I take the whole responsibility upon myself."
There was no time to argue: the bell rang. Mlle. Gilberte had barely time to escape through one of the doors of the parlor, whilst M. Costeclar was entering at the other.
If he did have enough perspicacity to guess what had just taken place, he did not in any way show it. He sat down; and it was only after conversing for a few moments upon indifferent subjects, that he asked how Mlle. Gilberte was.
"She is somewhat - unwell," stammered Mme. Favoral.
He did not appear surprised; only, "Our dear Favoral," he said, "will be still more pained than I am when he hears of this mishap."
Better than any other mother, Mme. Favoral must have understood and approved Mlle. Gilberte's invincible repugnance. To her also, when she was young, her father had come one day, and said, "I have discovered a husband for you." She had accepted him blindly. Bruised and wounded by daily outrages, she had sought refuge in marriage as in a haven of safety.
And since, hardly a day had elapsed that she had not thought it would have been better for her to have died rather then to have riveted to her neck those fetters that death alone can remove. She thought, therefore, that her daughter was perfectly right. And yet twenty years of slavery had so weakened the springs of her energy, that under the glance of Costeclar, threatening her with her husband's name, she felt embarrassed, and could scarcely stammer some timid excuses. And she allowed him to prolong his visit, and consequently her torment, for over an half an hour; then, when he had gone, "He and your father understand each other," said she to her daughter, "that is but too evident. What is the use of struggling?"
A fugitive blush colored the pale cheeks of Mlle. Gilberte. For the past forty-eight hours she had been exhausting herself, seeking an issue to an impossible situation; and she had accustomed her mind to the worst eventualities.
"Do you wish me, then, to desert the paternal roof?" she exclaimed.
Mme. Favoral almost dropped on the floor.
"You would run away," she stammered, "you!"
"Rather than become that man's wife, yes!"
"And where would you go, unfortunate child? what would you do?"
"I can earn my living."
Mme. Favoral shook her head sadly. The same suspicions were reviving within her that she had felt once before.
"Gilberte," she said in a beseeching tone, "am I, then, no longer your best friend? and will you not tell me from what sources you draw your courage and your resolution?"
And, as her daughter said nothing:
"God alone knows what may happen!" sighed the poor woman.
Nothing happened, but what could have been easily foreseen. When M. Favoral came home to dinner, he was whistling a perfect storm on the stairs. He abstained at first from all recrimination; but towards the end of the meal, with the most sarcastic look he could assume:
"It seems," he said to his daughter, "that you were unwell this afternoon?"
Bravely, and without flinching, she sustained his look; and, in a firm voice:
"I shall always be indisposed," she replied, "when M. Costeclar calls. You hear me, don't you, father - always!"
But the cashier of the Credit Mutual was not one of those men whose wrath finds vent in mere sarcasms. Rising suddenly to his feet:
"By the holy heavens!" he screamed forth, "you are wrong to trifle thus with my will; for, all of you here, I shall crush you as I do this glass."
And, with a frenzied gesture, he dashed the glass he held in his hand against the wall, where it broke in a thousand pieces.
Trembling like a leaf, Mme. Favoral staggered upon her chair.