She looked at him furtively every now and then, without being able to get beneath his epidermis.
The colonel, like a prudent father, wanted to study the character of his only daughter, and above all consult his wife, before entering on a conference upon which the happiness of the whole family depended.
"To-morrow, my precious child," he said as they parted for the night, "get up early, and we will go and take a walk on the seashore.

We have to talk about your poems, Mademoiselle de La Bastie." His last words, accompanied by a smile, which reappeared like an echo on Dumay's lips, were all that gave Modeste any clew to what was coming; but it was enough to calm her uneasiness and keep her awake far into the night with her head full of suppositions; this, however, did not prevent her from being dressed and ready in the morning long before the colonel.
"You know all, my kind papa ?" she said as soon as they were on the road to the beach.
"I know all, and a good deal more than you do," he replied.
After that remark father and daughter went some little way in silence.
"Explain to me, my child, how it happens that a girl whom her mother idolizes could have taken such an important step as to write to a stranger without consulting her." "Oh, papa! because mamma would never have allowed it." "And do you think, my daughter, that that was proper?
Though you have been educating your mind in this fatal way, how is it that your good sense and your intellect did not, in default of modesty, step in and show you that by acting as you did you were throwing yourself at a man's head.

To think that my daughter, my only remaining child, should lack pride and delicacy! Oh, Modeste, you made your father pass two hours in hell when he heard of it; for, after all, your conduct has been the same as Bettina's without the excuse of a heart's seduction; you were a coquette in cold blood, and that sort of coquetry is head-love, the worst vice of French women." "I, without pride!" said Modeste, weeping; "but _he_ has not yet seen me." "_He_ knows your name." "I did not tell it to him till my eyes had vindicated the correspondence, lasting three months, during which our souls had spoken to each other." "Oh, my dear misguided angel, you have mixed up a species of reason with a folly that has compromised your own happiness and that of your family." "But, after all, papa, happiness is the absolution of my temerity," she said, pouting.
"Oh! your conduct is temerity, is it ?" "A temerity that my mother practised before me," she retorted quickly.
"Rebellious child! your mother after seeing me at a ball told her father, who adored her, that she thought she could be happy with me.

Be honest, Modeste; is there any likeness between a love hastily conceived, I admit, but under the eyes of a father, and your mad action of writing to a stranger ?" "A stranger, papa?
say rather one of our greatest poets, whose character and whose life are exposed to the strongest light of day, to detraction, to calumny,--a man robed in fame, and to whom, my dear father, I was a mere literary and dramatic personage, one of Shakespeare's women, until the moment when I wished to know if the man himself were as beautiful as his soul." "Good God! my poor child, you are turning marriage into poetry.

But if, from time immemorial, girls have been cloistered in the bosom of their families, if God, if social laws put them under the stern yoke of parental sanction, it is, mark my words, to spare them the misfortunes that this very poetry which charms and dazzles you, and which you are therefore unable to judge of, would entail upon them.