“Would Valentine consent?”

Her anxiety to set her mind at rest sent her straightway to her daughter’s room.  She found Valentine reading by the light of a flickering candle.

“My daughter,” she said abruptly, “an estimable young man has demanded your hand in marriage, and I have promised it to him.”

On this startling announcement, Valentine started up and clasped her hands.

“Impossible!” she murmured, “impossible!”

“Will you be good enough to explain why it is impossible?”

“Did you tell him, mother, who I am, what I am?  Did you confess——­”

“Your past fully?  No, thank God, I am not fool enough for that, and I hope you will have the sense to imitate my example, and keep silent on the subject.”

Although Valentine’s spirit was completely crushed by her mother’s tyranny, her sense of honor made her revolt against this demand.

“You certainly would not wish me to marry an honest man, mother, without confessing to him everything connected with the past?  I could never practise a deception so base.”

The countess felt very much like flying into a passion; but she knew that threats would be of no avail in this instance, where resistance would be a duty of conscience with her daughter.  Instead of commanding, she entreated.

“Poor child,” she said, “my poor, dear Valentine.  If you only knew the dreadful state of our affairs, you would not talk in this heartless way.  Your folly commenced our ruin; now it is at its last stage.  Do you know that our creditors threaten to drive us away from La Verberie?  Then what will become of us, my poor child?  Must I in my old age go begging from door to door?  We are on the verge of ruin, and this marriage is our only hope of salvation.”

These tearful entreaties were followed by plausible arguments.

The fair-spoken countess made use of strange and subtle theories.  What she formerly regarded as a monstrous crime, she now spoke of as a peccadillo.

She could understand, she said, her daughter’s scruples if there were any danger of the past being brought to light; but she had taken such precautions that there was no fear of that.

Would it make her love her husband any the less?  No.  Would he be made any happier for hearing that she had loved before?  No.  Then why say anything about the past?

Shocked, bewildered, Valentine asked herself if this was really her mother?  The haughty woman, who had always been such a worshipper of honor and duty, to contradict every word she had uttered during her life!  Valentine could not understand the sudden change.

But she would have understood it, had she known to what base deeds a mind blunted by selfishness and vanity can lend itself.

The countess’s subtle arguments and shameful sophistry neither moved nor convinced her; but she had not the courage to resist the tearful entreaties of her mother, who ended by falling on her knees, and with clasped hands imploring her child to save her from worse than death.