my wife, too, likes him better than any other young man of our
acquaintance. Madelon has seen a good deal of him when she has been home
from the convent in her holidays, and I have reason to think she does
not dislike him. If he likes her and she likes him, and the idea is
pleasing to you and madame, we will make a match of it. If not, let it
pass; we will say no more."

Again the seigneur of Beaubocage assured his friend that Gustave would be
enchanted with the proposal; and again it was of Cotenoir that he
thought, and not of the heart or the inclinations of his son.

This conversation took place late in autumn, and at the new year Gustave
was to come. Nothing was to be said to him about his intended wife until
he arrived; that was a point upon which the Baron insisted.

"The young man may have fallen in love with some fine young person in
Paris," he said; "and in that case we will say nothing to him of Madelon.
But if we find him with the heart free, and inclined to take to my
daughter, we may give him encouragement."

This was solemnly agreed between the two fathers. Nor was Mademoiselle
Frehlter to be told of the matrimonial scheme until it ripened. But after
this dinner at Cotenoir the household at Beaubocage talked of little else
than of the union of the two families. What grandeur, what wealth, what
happiness! Gustave the lord of Cotenoir! Poor Cydalise had never seen a
finer mansion than the old chateau, with its sugar-loaf towers and stone
terraces, and winding stairs, and tiny inconvenient turret chambers, and
long dreary salon and _salle-a-manger_. She could picture to herself
nothing more splendid. For Gustave to be offered the future possession of
Cotenoir was as if he were suddenly to be offered the succession to a