‘And where is Marie?’ Michel asked.
An answer came from some one that Marie was upstairs.
Supper would soon be ready, and Marie was busy.
Then Michel sent up an order by Peter that Marie
should come down. But Marie did not come down.
‘She had gone to her own room,’ Peter said.
Then there came a frown on Michel’s brow.
Marie had promised to try, and this was not trying.
He said no more till they went up to supper.
There was Marie standing as usual at the soup tureen.
Urmand walked up to her, and they touched each other’s
hand; but Marie said never a word. The frown
on Michel’s brow was very black, but Marie went
on dispensing her soup.
Adrian Urmand, in spite of his white hands and his
well-combed locks and the silk lining to his coat,
had so much of the spirit of a man that he was minded
to hold his head well up before the girl whom he wished
to make his wife. Michel during that drive from
Remiremont had told him that he might probably prevail.
Michel had said a thousand things in favour of his
niece and not a word to her prejudice; but he had
so spoken, or had endeavoured so to speak, as to make
Urmand understand that Marie could only be won with
difficulty, and that she was perhaps unaccountably
averse to the idea of matrimony. ’She
is like a young filly, you know, that starts and plunges
when she is touched,’ he had said. ’You
think there is nobody else?’ Urmand had asked.
Then Michel Voss had answered with confidence, ‘I
am sure there is nobody else.’ Urmand
had listened and said very little; but when at supper
he saw that the uncle was ruffled in his temper and
sat silent with a black brow, that Madame Voss was
troubled in spirit, and that Marie dispensed her soup
without vouchsafing a look to any one, he felt that
it behoved him to do his best, and he did it.
He talked freely to Madame Voss, telling her the
news from Basle,—how at length he thought
the French trade was reviving, and how all the Swiss
authorities were still opposed to the German occupation
of Alsace; and how flax was likely to be dearer than
ever he had seen it; and how the travelling English
were fewer this year than usual, to the great detriment
of the innkeepers. Every now and then he would
say a word to Marie herself, as she passed near him,
speaking in a cheery tone and striving his best to
dispel a black silence which on the present occasion
would have been specially lugubrious. Upon the
whole he did his work well, and Michel Voss was aware
of it; but Marie Bromar entertained no gentle thought
respecting him. He was not wanted there, and
he ought not to have come. She had given him
an answer, and he ought to have taken it. Nothing,
she declared to herself, was meaner than a man who
would go to a girl’s parents or guardians for
support, when the girl herself had told him that she
wished to have nothing to do with him. Marie
had promised that she would try, but every feeling
of her heart was against the struggle.
