in authority must be careful what they say,"
urged the girl.

"Well, do not show it to your mother--that is all I ask; for if she
believed I had a lover, she would make game of me."

"I promise."

The cousins reached the drawing-room just as the Baroness turned
faint. Her daughter's cry of alarm recalled her to herself. Lisbeth
went off to fetch some salts. When she came back, she found the mother
and daughter in each other's arms, the Baroness soothing her
daughter's fears, and saying:

"It was nothing; a little nervous attack.--There is your father," she
added, recognizing the Baron's way of ringing the bell. "Say not a
word to him."

Adeline rose and went to meet her husband, intending to take him into
the garden and talk to him till dinner should be served of the
difficulties about the proposed match, getting him to come to some
decision as to the future, and trying to hint at some warning advice.

Baron Hector Hulot came in, in a dress at once lawyer-like and
Napoleonic, for Imperial men--men who had been attached to the Emperor
--were easily distinguishable by their military deportment, their blue
coats with gilt buttons, buttoned to the chin, their black silk stock,
and an authoritative demeanor acquired from a habit of command in
circumstances requiring despotic rapidity. There was nothing of the
old man in the Baron, it must be admitted; his sight was still so
good, that he could read without spectacles; his handsome oval face,
framed in whiskers that were indeed too black, showed a brilliant
complexion, ruddy with the veins that characterize a sanguine
temperament; and his stomach, kept in order by a belt, had not
exceeded the limits of "the majestic," as Brillat-Savarin says. A fine
aristocratic air and great affability served to conceal the libertine
with whom Crevel had had such high times. He was one of those men
whose eyes always light up at the sight of a pretty woman, even of
such as merely pass by, never to be seen again.

"Have you been speaking, my dear?" asked Adeline, seeing him with an
anxious brow.

"No," replied Hector, "but I am worn out with hearing others speak for
two hours without coming to a vote. They carry on a war of words, in
which their speeches are like a cavalry charge which has no effect on
the enemy. Talk has taken the place of action, which goes very much
against the grain with men who are accustomed to marching orders, as I
said to the Marshal when I left him. How