never, never, never marry! He told it to me."

"At your mother's request."

"Yes, that is true. I know since that it was at mamma's petition that he
talked that way; she hoped it would prevent my being stubborn in my
craze for him."

"Craze!" exclaimed Aunt Louise.

"Excuse me, Aunt Louise, it is a word of to-day."

"And means--"

"It means a sort of unexplainable, absurd, and extravagant love that
comes without its being possible to know why--in short, Aunt Louise,
exactly the love I have for him."

"Much obliged! But you do not tell everything. You do not say that your
mother desired your marriage with Courtalin--"

"Yes, of course; mamma was quite right. M. de Courtalin has a thousand
sterling merits that you have not--that you will never have; and then M.
de Courtalin had a particularly good point in mamma's eyes: he did not
find me too thin, and he asked for my hand in marriage. One day about
four o'clock (that was the 2d of June last year) mamma came into my room
with an expression on her face I had never seen before. 'My child,' she
said--'my dear child!' She had no need to finish; I had understood. M.
de Courtalin all the evening before, at the Princess de Viran's, had
hovered about me, and the next day his mother had come to declare to