Her tears ceased; the quiver passed from her lip.
"You are very good, madame," she said, with a coldness that rendered the courteous words almost insulting, "but nothing ails me save a wish to be alone." "You have been alone too much of late," the Dowager answered, persisting in her wish to show kindness to Valerie; for all that, had she looked into her own heart, she might have been puzzled to find a reason for her mood--unless the reason lay in her own affliction of anxiety for Marius.
"Perhaps I have," said the girl, in the same cold, almost strained voice.

"It was not by my own contriving." "Ah, but it was, child; indeed it was.

Had you been reasonable you had found us kinder.

We had never treated you as we have done, never made a prisoner of you." Valerie looked up into the beautiful ivory-white face, with its black eyes and singularly scarlet lips, and a wan smile raised the corners of her gentle mouth.
"You had no right--none ever gave it you--to set constraint and restraint upon me." "I had--indeed, indeed I had," the Marquise answered her, in a tone of sad protest.

"Your father gave me such a right when he gave me charge of you." "Was it a part of your charge to seek to turn me from my loyalty to Florimond, and endeavour to compel me by means gentle or ungentle into marriage with Marius ?" "We thought Florimond dead; or, if not dead, then certainly unworthy of you to leave you without news of him for years together.