and he was not quite confident about getting up again. It would be ridiculous, he felt, to urge his suit on all-fours, and he knew the Marquise well enough, besides, to be quite sure her paroxysms of laughter in such a difficulty would render her incapable of returning an intelligible answer. Altogether, he decided on sitting still, and though it was obviously a disadvantage, doing his love-making at arm's length.
"Madame!" he repeated for the fourth time, I am a soldier; I am a man of few words; I am, I hope, a gentleman, but I am no longer young. I do not dissemble this; I am even past my prime. Frankly, madame, I am getting an old man."
It was incontestable. She smothered a smile as she mentally conceded the position, but in reply she had nothing to say, and she said it.
The Prince-Marshal, expecting the disclaimer that perhaps politeness demanded, seemed here a little bothered. He had no doubt gone through many rehearsals of the imaginary scene, and it confused him to lose his anticipated cue. Seeking inspiration once more, then, from his hat, he proceeded rather inconsequently. "Therefore it is that I feel emboldened in the present instance to lay before you, madame, the thoughts, the intentions, the wishes, in brief—the anticipations that I had formed of my own future, and to ask your opinion, and, indeed, your advice, or perhaps, I should say, your approval of my plans."
What a quick ear she had! Far off, upstairs, she heard the door of her daughter's bedroom shut, and she knew that Cerise, after stopping at every flower-stand in the gallery, would as usual come straight to her mamma's boudoir. Such a diversion would be invaluable, as it must for the present prevent any decided result from her interview with the Prince-Marshal. She had resolved not to accept him for a husband, we know, and sooner or later, she must come to a definite understanding with her faithful old suitor; but she seemed in this instance strangely given to procrastination, and inclined from time to time to put off the evil day.
Why she did not prefer to have done with it once for all, why she could not wait calmly for his proposal and refuse him with a polite reverence, as she had refused a score of
