_juste milieu_ is by this time."

"Ah! my dear, I entreat you, don't make fun of my poor husband."

"I am not talking of your husband, I am talking of you. Last night you
so surprised me that I have come here to take back my words. I like
people to follow my advice, but I don't like them to go beyond it."

"At any other time I should make you explain what horrible impropriety
I have committed under your counsel; but fate has interposed and settled
everything. Monsieur de Sallenauve will, at any cost, disappear from our
path, and therefore why discuss the degree of kindness one might have
shown him?"

"But," said Madame de Camps, "since I must tell you all, I have come
to think him a dangerous acquaintance,--less for you than for some one
else."

"Who?" asked Madame de l'Estorade.

"Nais. That child, with her passion for her 'preserver,' makes me really
uneasy."

"Oh!" said the countess, smiling rather sadly, "are you not giving too
much importance to childish nonsense?"

"Nais is, of course, a child, but a child who will ripen quickly into a
woman. Did you not tell me yourself that you were sometimes frightened
at the intuition she showed in matters beyond her years?"

"That is true. But what you call her passion for Monsieur de Sallenauve,
besides being perfectly natural, is expressed by the dear little thing
with such freedom and publicity that the sentiment is, it seems to me,
obviously childlike."

"Well, don't trust to that; especially not after this troublesome being
ceases to come to your house. Suppose that when the time comes to
marry your daughter, this fancy should have smouldered in her heart and
increased; imagine your difficulty!"

"Oh! between now and then, thank Heaven! there's time enough," replied
Madame de l'Estorade, in a tone of incredulity.

"Between now and then," said Madame de Camps, "Monsieur de Sallenauve
may have reached a distinction which will put his name on every lip; and
Nais, with her lively imagination, is more likely than other girls to be
dazzled by it."

"But, my dear love, look at the disproportion in their ages."

"Monsieur de Sallenauve is thirty, and Nais will soon be fourteen; that
is precisely the difference between you and Monsieur de l'Estorade."

"Well, you may be right," said Madame de l'Estorade, "and the sort of
marriage I made from reason Nais may want to make from folly. But you
needn't be afraid; I will ruin that idol in her estimation."

"But ther