“With the fifty thousand francs a year which belong to Mademoiselle Natalie you could have brought her up handsomely without coming to ruin.  But if you have squandered everything while you were a girl what will it be when you are a married woman?”

“Then drop us altogether,” said Solonet.  “The handsomest girl in Bordeaux has a right to spend more than she has, if she likes.”

“I’ll talk to my client about that,” said the old notary.

“Very good, old father Cassandra, go and tell your client that we haven’t a penny,” thought Solonet, who, in the solitude of his study, had strategically massed his forces, drawn up his propositions, manned the drawbridge of discussion, and prepared the point at which the opposing party, thinking the affair a failure, could suddenly be led into a compromise which would end in the triumph of his client.

The white dress with its rose-colored ribbons, the Sevigne curls, Natalie’s tiny foot, her winning glance, her pretty fingers constantly employed in adjusting curls that needed no adjustment, these girlish manoeuvres like those of a peacock spreading his tail, had brought Paul to the point at which his future mother-in-law desired to see him.  He was intoxicated with love, and his eyes, the sure thermometer of the soul, indicated the degree of passion at which a man commits a thousand follies.

“Natalie is so beautiful,” he whispered to the mother, “that I can conceive the frenzy which leads a man to pay for his happiness by death.”

Madame Evangelista replied with a shake of her head:—­

“Lover’s talk, my dear count.  My husband never said such charming things to me; but he married me without a fortune and for thirteen years he never caused me one moment’s pain.”

“Is that a lesson you are giving me?” said Paul, laughing.

“You know how I love you, my dear son,” she answered, pressing his hand.  “I must indeed love you well to give you my Natalie.”

“Give me, give me?” said the young girl, waving a screen of Indian feathers, “what are you whispering about me?”

“I was telling her,” replied Paul, “how much I love you, since etiquette forbids me to tell it to you.”

“Why?”

“I fear to say too much.”

“Ah! you know too well how to offer the jewels of flattery.  Shall I tell you my private opinion about you?  Well, I think you have more mind than a lover ought to have.  To be the Pink of Fashion and a wit as well,” she added, dropping her eyes, “is to have too many advantages:  a man should choose between them.  I fear too, myself.”

“And why?”

“We must not talk in this way.  Mamma, do you not think that this conversation is dangerous inasmuch as the contract is not yet signed?”

“It soon will be,” said Paul.

“I should like to know what Achilles and Nestor are saying to each other in the next room,” said Natalie, nodding toward the door of the little salon with a childlike expression of curiosity.