“Perhaps M. de Saint-Remy will answer you in a day or two.”
“I cannot hope for that. It is so long since I wrote to him.”
“He cannot have received your letter. Why did not you write to him again? From here to Angers is not so far, and we should soon have his answer.”
“My poor child, you know how much that has cost me already!”
“But there’s no risk; and he is so good in spite of his roughness. Wasn’t he one of the oldest friends of my father? And then he is a relation of ours.”
“But he is poor himself,—his fortune is very small. Perhaps he does not reply to us that he may avoid the pain of a refusal.”
“But he may not have received your letter, mamma!”
“And if he has received it, my dear,—one of two things, either he is himself in too painful a position to come to our aid, or he feels
