"I'll have to be," laughing a little at her expression; "but remember,"
turning in the doorway, "if I don't hear, I shall immediately find that
business compels an Eastern trip." And, shaking a warning finger at her,
he disappeared to his packing in an opposite apartment.

Madame Grandet, meanwhile, resumed her work, and held it till the door
had closed behind the young man. Then she dropped it, her smiles
vanished, and she grew grave and thoughtful; for, though far less
worldly than many, she was too much of a Frenchwoman to look upon a
misalliance without a shiver of dread and apprehension. Her relationship
to Robert was only by marriage, but an own child could not have been
dearer, for he was bound to her by all the traditions and ties of a
lifetime. His mother, pretty Nadine Grandet, had been her earliest
friend, and they had lived side by side, in a little village on the
Ouise, until she was wooed and won by the American artist, Robert
Glendenning, who had been attracted to that neighborhood by his studies,
and the fame of Sevigne, whom he worshipped afar. He finally brought his
pretty French bride to America, and they lived happily in an Eastern
city till the little Robert was twelve years old. Then a sudden illness
took the wife and mother to heaven, leaving the husband and son to keep
house in a Bohemianish way, until Nadine's studious brother, Leon, who
had meanwhile married the lifelong friend of his sister, Felicie
Bougane, decided to come to America.

The Grandets had no children, and as soon as the madame's eyes fell upon
the little Robert, who was wonderfully like his dead mother, her heart
went out to him; and from that time on he had been like a son to her,
especially after his father's death, a few years later.