The lady squeezed Pons’ arm with deep meaning; she could not have said more if she had used the consecrated formula, “Let us swear an eternal friendship.”  The glance which accompanied that “Thank you, cousin,” was a caress.

When the young lady had been put into the carriage, and the jobbed brougham had disappeared down the Rue Charlot, Brunner talked bric-a-brac to Pons, and Pons talked marriage.

“Then you see no obstacle?” said Pons.

“Oh!” said Brunner, “she is an insignificant little thing, and the mother is a trifle prim.—­We shall see.”

“A handsome fortune one of these days. . . .  More than a million—­”

“Good-bye till Monday!” interrupted the millionaire.  “If you should care to sell your collection of pictures, I would give you five or six hundred thousand francs—­”

“Ah!” said Pons; he had no idea that he was so rich.  “But they are my great pleasure in life, and I could not bring myself to part with them.  I could only sell my collection to be delivered after my death.”

“Very well.  We shall see.”

“Here we have two affairs afoot!” said Pons; he was thinking only of the marriage.

Brunner shook hands and drove away in his splendid carriage.  Pons watched it out of sight.  He did not notice that Remonencq was smoking his pipe in the doorway.

That evening Mme. de Marville went to ask advice of her father-in-law, and found the whole Popinot family at the Camusots’ house.  It was only natural that a mother who had failed to capture an eldest son should be tempted to take her little revenge; so Mme. de Marville threw out hints of the splendid marriage that her Cecile was about to make.  —­“Whom can Cecile be going to marry?” was the question upon all lips.  And Cecile’s mother, without suspecting that she was betraying her secret, let fall words and whispered confidences, afterwards supplemented by Mme. Berthier, till gossip circulating in the bourgeois empyrean where Pons accomplished his gastronomical evolutions took something like the following form: 

“Cecile de Marville is engaged to be married to a young German, a banker from philanthropic motives, for he has four millions; he is like a hero in a novel, a perfect Werther, charming and kind-hearted.  He has sown his wild oats, and he is distractedly in love with Cecile; it is a case of love at first sight; and so much the more certain, since Cecile had all Pons’ paintings of Madonnas for rivals,” and so forth and so forth.

Two or three of the set came to call on the Presidente, ostensibly to congratulate, but really to find out whether or not the marvelous tale were true.  For their benefit Mme. de Marville executed the following admirable variations on the theme of son-in-law which mothers may consult, as people used to refer to the Complete Letter Writer.

“A marriage is not an accomplished fact,” she told Mme. Chiffreville, “until you have been in the mayor’s office and the church.  We have only come as far as a personal interview; so I count upon your friendship to say nothing of our hopes.”