Kiss me, dear--don't look any farther, don't look any farther; he is positively just the man for us." "But, mother, since he does not want me!" "Good! he does not want you now! What nonsense! what do you know about it?
Did you ask him?
Besides, it is impossible, my darling; you were made for each other in all eternity.

He is charming, _distingue_, well-bred, rich, intelligent, everything, in a word--everything." "Everything, mother, except in love with me." The baroness exclaiming anew against such a very unlikely thing, Clotilde exposed to her eyes a series of facts and particulars which left no room for illusions.

The dismayed mother was compelled to resign herself to the painful conviction that there really was in the world a man of sufficiently bad taste not to be in love with her daughter, and that this man unfortunately was Monsieur de Lucan.
She returned slowly to her residence, meditating on the way upon that strange mystery the explanation of which, however, she was not long to wait..