"
What she did not consider it necessary to explain to him was, that
she had palmed off a complete romance upon the Marquise de Henares,
to the effect that Wilhelm had saved her life at Ault while bathing,
that he was a celebrated German revolutionist, and the future
President of the German Republic, to whom she was affording a refuge
in her house because, for the time being, he was obliged to be in
hiding from the German secret police, and so forth, and so forth.
The marquise believed every word. In her answer, she certainly
reproached her daughter gently for having anything to do with
foreign conspirators, but otherwise praised her evidence of
gratitude toward her preserver, and frankly expressed her admiration
for the handsome person of this interesting German. She even
inclosed a note to him, in which she thanked him from her
overflowing mother's heart for all he had done for her only child,
and adjured him to be very prudent. He could make nothing out of it,
and Pilar declared that she was equally in the dark. "I only see
this much," she said in an off-hand manner, "that mamma loves you
already, and will do still more so when she gets to know you
personally. And that is all that matters."
It was on the second Sunday after their arrival in Paris that the
children came to visit their mother.
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