noble and handsome.

"You stayed at Les Touches longer than you did last night, my dear
one," said the mother at last, in an agitated tone.

"Yes, dear mother," he answered, offering no explanation.

The curtness of this answer brought clouds to his mother's brow, and
she resolved to postpone the explanation till the morrow. When mothers
admit the anxieties which were now torturing the baroness, they
tremble before their sons; they feel instinctively the effect of the
great emancipation that comes with love; they perceive what that
sentiment is about to take from them; but they have, at the same time,
a sense of joy in knowing that their sons are happy; conflicting
feelings battle in their hearts. Though the result may be the
development of their sons into superior men, true mothers do not like
this forced abdication; they would rather keep their children small
and still requiring protection. Perhaps that is the secret of their
predilection for feeble, deformed, or weak-minded offspring.

"You are tired, dear child; go to bed," she said, repressing her
tears.

A mother who does not know all that her son is doing thinks the worst;
that is, if a mother loves as much and is as much beloved as Fanny.
But perhaps all other mothers would have trembled now as she did. The
patient care of twenty years might be rendered worthless. This human
masterpiece of virtuous and noble and religious education, Calyste,
might be destroyed; the happiness of his life, so long and carefully
prepared for, might be forever ruined by this woman.