At last, finding such silence unbearable, she made up her mind to address him: "What has been the matter with you, Guillaume, for some time past?
Why don't you tell me what you have to tell me ?" He descended from the clouds, as it were, and answered in astonishment: "What I have to tell you ?" "Yes, I know it as well as you do, and I thought you would speak to me of it, since it pleases you to do nothing here without consulting me." At this he turned very pale and shuddered.

So he had not been mistaken in the matter, even Mere-Grand knew all about it.

To talk of it, however, was to give shape to his suspicions, to transform what, hitherto, might merely have been a fancy on his part into something real and definite.
"It was inevitable, my dear son," said Mere-Grand.

"I foresaw it from the outset.

And if I did not warn you of it, it was because I believed in some deep design on your part.