id it'll be an awful blow to the poor chap.

MADAME GUERET. Oh, he's young. He'll get over it.

FELIAT. What was I saying when he came in? Ah, yes; you know I've
decided to add a bindery to my printing works at Evreux; you saw the
building started when you were down there. If things go as I want them
to, I shall try to do some cheap artistic binding. I want to get hold of
a man who won't rob me to manage this new branch and look after it; a
man who won't be too set in his ideas, because I want him to adopt mine;
and, at the same time, I'd like him to be not altogether a stranger. I
thought I'd found him; but I saw the man yesterday and I don't like him.
Now will _you_ take on the job? Would it suit you?

GUERET. Would it suit me! Oh, my dear Feliat, how can I possibly thank
you? To tell you the truth, I've been wondering what in the world I
should do with myself now; and I was dreading the future. What you offer
me is better than anything I could have dreamt of. What do you say,
Marguerite?

MADAME GUERET. I am delighted.

FELIAT. Then that's all right.

GUERET [_to his brother-in-law_] I think you won't regret having
confidence in me.

FELIAT. And your goddaughter?

MADAME GUERET. Therese?

FELIAT. Yes; how is _she_ going to face this double news of her ruin and
the breaking off of her engagement?

MADAME GUERET. I think she ought to have sense enough to understand that
one is the consequence of the other. She can hardly expect Rene's
parents to give their son to a girl without money.

FELIAT. I suppose not. But what's to become of her?

GUERET. She will live with us, of course.

MADAME GUERET. "Of course"! I like that.

GUERET. She has no other relations, and her father left her in my care.

MADAME GUERET. He left her in _your_ care, and it's _I_ who have been
rushed into all the trouble of a child who is nothing to me.

GUERET. Child! She was nineteen when her father died.

FELIAT. To look after a young girl of nineteen is a very great
responsibility.

MADAME GUERET [_laughing bitterly_] Ho! Ho! Look after! Look after
Mademoiselle Therese! You think she's a person who allows herself to be
looked after! And yet you've seen her more or less every holidays.

GUERET. You've not had to look after her; she has been at the Lycee.

_Therese comes in dressed as Kalekairi from "Barberine." She is a pretty
girl of twenty-three, healthy, and bright._

THERESE. The bell, the bell, godmother! You're forge