and as a future protection to herself. Now that it had disclosed
its burden she could look at him no more, and when her father addressed
her significantly: 'Marquise, you did me the honour to consent to
accompany me to the Church of the Frari this afternoon?' she felt her
self-accusation of coquettry biting under her bosom like a thing alive.

Roland explained the situation to Nevil.

'It is the mania with us, my dear Nevil, to marry our girls young to
established men. Your established man carries usually all the signs,
visible to the multitude or not, of the stages leading to that eminence.
We cannot, I believe, unless we have the good fortune to boast the
paternity of Hercules, disconnect ourselves from the steps we have
mounted; not even, the priests inform us, if we are ascending to heaven;
we carry them beyond the grave. However, it seems that our excellent
marquis contrives to keep them concealed, and he is ready to face
marriage--the Grandest Inquisitor, next to Death. Two furious
matchmakers--our country, beautiful France, abounds in them--met one day;
they were a comtesse and a baronne, and they settled the alliance. The
bell was rung, and Renee came out of school. There is this to be said:
she has no mother; the sooner a girl without a mother has a husband the
better. That we are all agreed upon. I have no personal objection to the
marquis; he has never been in any great scandals. He is Norman, and has
estates in Normandy, Dauphiny, Touraine; he is hospitable, luxurious.
Renee will have a fine hotel in Paris. But I am eccentric: I have read in
our old Fabliaux of December and May. Say the marquis is November, say
October; he is still some distance removed from the plump Spring month.
And we in our family have wits and passions. In fine, a bud of a rose in
an old gentleman's button-hole! it is a challenge to the whole world of
youth; and if the bud should leap? Enough of this matter, friend Nevil;
but sometimes a friend must allow himself to be bothered. I have perfect
confidence in my sister, you see; I simply protest against her being
exposed to . . . You know men. I protest, that is, in the privacy of my
cigar-case, for I have no chance elsewhere. The affair is on wheels. The
very respectable matchmakers have kindled the marquis on the one hand,
and my father on the other, and Renee passes obediently from the latter
to the former. In India they sacrifice the widows, in France the
virgins.'

Roland proceed