her happiness to
inhabit, she wrote a dutiful letter to her mamma, and had just sealed it
when she was sent for by Madame de Mauves. She found this ancient lady
seated in her boudoir in a lavender satin gown and with her candles all
lighted as for the keeping of some fete. "Are you very happy?" the old
woman demanded, making Euphemia sit down before her.

"I'm almost afraid to say so, lest I should wake myself up."

"May you never wake up, belle enfant," Madame de Mauves grandly
returned. "This is the first marriage ever made in our family in this
way--by a Comte de Mauves proposing to a young girl in an arbour like
Jeannot and Jeannette. It has not been our way of doing things, and
people may say it wants frankness. My grandson tells me he regards
it--for the conditions--as the perfection of good taste. Very well. I'm
a very old woman, and if your differences should ever be as marked as
your agreements I shouldn't care to see them. But I should be sorry
to die and think you were going to be unhappy. You can't be, my dear,
beyond a certain point; because, though in this world the Lord sometimes
makes light of our expectations he never altogether ignores our deserts.
But you're very young and innocent and easy to dazzle. There never was a
man in the world--among the saints themselves--as good as you believe my
grandson. But he's a galant homme and a gentleman, and I've been talking
to him to-night. To you I want to say this--that you're to forget the
worldly rubbish I talked the other day about the happiness of
frivolous women. It's not the kind of happiness that would suit you, ma
toute-belle. Whatever befalls you, promise me this: to be, to remain,
your own sincere little self only, charming in your own serious little
way. The Comtesse de Mauves will be none the worse for it. Your brave
little self, understand, in spite of everything--bad precepts and bad
examples, bad fortune and even bad usage. Be persistently and patiently
just what the good God has made you, and even one of us--and one of
those who is most what we ARE--will do you justice!"

Euphemia remembered this speech in after-years, and more than once,
wearily closing her eyes, she seemed to see the old woman sitting
upright in her faded finery and smiling grimly like one of the Fates
who sees the wheel of fortune turning up her favourite event. But at the
moment it had for her simply the proper gravity of the occasion: this
was the way, she supposed, in wh