I felt a cold shiver down my back.  What could it be?

“You are aware that I had a fainting fit a short time ago,” she continued.  “I have long known that my heart was affected, but I had hoped it would have lasted long enough for me to fulfil a scheme I had for a thoroughly suitable and happy arrangement of your destiny.  It was a plan that would have taken time, and which I had hoped to put in the way of gradual accomplishment at this ball.  However, we must not grumble at fate—­it is not to be.  The doctor tells me I cannot possibly live more than a few weeks, therefore it follows that something must be settled immediately to secure you a future.  You are not aware, as I have not considered it necessary to inform you hitherto of my affairs, that all we are living on is an annuity your father bought for me, before the catastrophe to his fortunes.  That, you will understand, ceases with my life.  At my death you will be absolutely penniless, a beggar in the street.  Even were you to sell these trifles”—­and she pointed to the Sevres cups and the miniatures—­“the few pounds they would bring might keep you from starving for perhaps a month or two—­after that—­well, enough—­that question is impossible.  I can obtain no news of your father.  I have heard nothing from or of him for two years.  He may be dead—­we cannot count on him.  In short, I have decided, after due consideration and consultation with my old friend the Marquis, that you must marry Augustus Gurrage.  It is my dying wish.”

My eyes fell from grandmamma’s face and happened to light on the picture of Ambrosine Eustasie de Calincourt.  There she was, with the rose in her dress, smiling at me out of the old paste frame.  I was so stunned, all I could think of was to wonder if it was the same rose she walked up the guillotine steps with.  I did not hear grandmamma speaking; for a minute there was a buzzing in my ears.

Marry Augustus Gurrage!

“My child”—­grandmamma’s voice was rather sharper—­“I am aware that it is a mesalliance, a stain, a finish to our fine race, and if I could take you on the journey I am going I would not suggest this alternative to you; but one must have common-sense and be practical; and as you are young and must live, and cannot beg, this is the only certain and possible solution of the matter.  The great honor you will do him by marrying him removes all sense of obligation in receiving the riches he will bestow on you—­you yourself being without a dot.  Child—­why don’t you answer?”

I got up and walked to the window.  She had said I was a true daughter of the race.  Would it be of the race to kill myself?  No—­there is nothing so vulgar as to be dramatic.  Grandmamma has never erred.  She would not ask this of me if there was any other way.

I came back and sat down.

“Very well, grandmamma,” I said.

The blue mark round her lips seemed to fade a little and she smiled.