As far as he could make out she seemed to
imply that, with an unbounded confidence in her mother's affection and
sagacity, she felt no unsurmountable dislike for the person of General
D'Hubert; and that this was quite sufficient for a well-brought-up young
lady to begin married life upon. This view hurt and tormented the pride
of General D'Hubert. And yet he asked himself, with a sort of sweet
despair, what more could he expect? She had a quiet and luminous
forehead. Her violet eyes laughed while the lines of her lips and chin
remained composed in admirable gravity. All this was set off by such
a glorious mass of fair hair, by a complexion so marvellous, by such
a grace of expression, that General D'Hubert really never found the
opportunity to examine with sufficient detachment the lofty exigencies
of his pride. In fact, he became shy of that line of inquiry since it
had led once or twice to a crisis of solitary passion in which it was
borne upon him that he loved her enough to kill her rather than lose
her. From such passages, not unknown to men of forty, he would come out
broken, exhausted, remorseful, a little dismayed.
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