ance, a man is broken down; I'm nothing but
an old fellow now. A woman like you would pet me and care for me, and
her money, joined to my poor pension, would give me ease in my old days;
of course I should prefer such a woman to a little minx who would worry
the life out of me, and be thirty years old, with passions, when
I should be sixty, with rheumatism. At my age, a man considers and
calculates. To tell you the truth between ourselves, I should not wish
to have children."
Sylvie's face was an open book to the colonel during this tirade, and
her next question proved to him Vinet's perfidy.
"Then you don't love Pierrette?" she said.
"Heavens! are you out of your mind, my dear Sylvie?" he cried. "Can
those who have no teeth crack nuts? Thank God I've got some common-sense
and know what I'm about."
Sylvie thus reassured resolved not to show her own hand, and thought
herself very shrewd in putting her own ideas into her brother's mouth.
"Jerome," she said, "thought of the match."
"How could your brother take up such an incongruous idea? Why, it is
only a few days ago that, in order to find out his secrets, I told him I
loved Bathilde. He turned as white as your collar."
"My brother! does he love Bathilde?" asked Sylvie.
"Madly,--and yet Bathilde is only after his money." ("One for you,
Vinet!" thought the colonel.) "I can't understand why he should have
told you that about Pierrette. No, Sylvie," he said, taking her hand and
pressing it in a certain way, "since you have opened this matter" (he
drew nearer to her), "well" (he kissed her hand; as a cavalry captain he
had already proved his courage), "let me tell you that I desire no wife
but you. Though such a marriage may look like one of convenience, I
feel, on my side, a sincere affection for you."
"But if I _wish_ you to marry Pierrette? if I leave her my fortune--eh,
colonel?"
"But I don't want to be miserable in my home, and in less than ten
years see a popinjay like Julliard hovering round my wife and addressing
verses to her in the newspapers. I'm too much of a man to stand that.
No, I will never make a marriage that is disproportionate in age."
"Well, colonel, we will talk seriously of this another time," said
Sylvie, casting a glance upon him which she supposed to be full of love,
though, in point of fact, it was a good deal like that of an ogress. Her
cold, blue lips of a violet tinge drew back from the yellow teeth, and
she thought she s
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