Page:Novels of Honoré de Balzac Volume 23.djvu/155

 be all the better as I also wish to give Ursule a singing-master.”

“Well then, till to-night, uncle; we will come with your great-nephew Désiré, who is now a lawyer.”

“Till to-night,” replied Minoret, who wanted to fathom these shallow minds.

The two nieces squeezed Ursule’s hand, saying to her with pretended graciousness:

“Au revoir.”

“Oh! godfather, then you see into my heart?” cried Ursule, giving the old man a look full of gratitude.

“You have a voice,” he said. “And I also want you to have drawing and Italian masters. A woman,” resumed the doctor, looking at Ursule as he was opening the gate of his house, “ought to be brought up in such a way as to feel herself equal to any position in which her marriage may place her.”

Ursule grew as red as a cherry; her guardian seemed to be thinking of the same person as she was. Feeling herself on the point of confessing the involuntary partiality which drove her to thinking of Savinien and connecting all her longing for perfection with him, she went and sat down under the clump of climbing plants, where, from afar, she stood out like a blue and white flower.

“You can quite see, godfather, how kind your nieces are to me; they were nice,” she said, seeing him coming, and to throw him off the scent of the thoughts which had made her pensive.