her own coquetry she was struck to the heart with a variety of contradictory thoughts.  Without blaming her mother, she was half-ashamed of manoeuvres the object of which was, undoubtedly, some personal game.  She was also seized with a jealous curiosity which is easily conceived.  She wanted to find out if Paul loved her well enough to rise above the obstacles that her mother foresaw and which she now saw clouding the face of the old lawyer.  These ideas and sentiments prompted her to an action of loyalty which became her well.  But, for all that, the blackest perfidy could not have been as dangerous as her present innocence.

“Paul,” she said in a low voice, and she so called him for the first time, “if any difficulties as to property arise to separate us, remember that I free you from all engagements, and will allow you to let the blame of such a rupture rest on me.”

She put such dignity into this expression of her generosity that Paul believed in her disinterestedness and in her ignorance of the strange fact that his notary had just told to him.  He pressed the young girl’s hand and kissed it like a man to whom love is more precious than wealth.  Natalie left the room.

“Sac-a-papier!  Monsieur le comte, you are committing a great folly,” said the old notary, rejoining his client.

Paul grew thoughtful.  He had expected to unite Natalie’s fortune with his own and thus obtain for his married life an income of one hundred thousand francs a year; and however much a man may be in love he cannot pass without emotion and anxiety from the prospect of a hundred thousand to the certainty of forty-six thousand a year and the duty of providing for a woman accustomed to every luxury.

“My daughter is no longer here,” said Madame Evangelista, advancing almost regally toward her son-in-law and his notary.  “May I be told what is happening?”

“Madame,” replied Mathias, alarmed at Paul’s silence, “an obstacle which I fear will delay us has arisen—­”

At these words, Maitre Solonet issued from the little salon and cut short the old man’s speech by a remark which restored Paul’s composure.  Overcome by the remembrance of his gallant speeches and his lover-like behavior, he felt unable to disown them or to change his course.  He longed, for the moment, to fling himself into a gulf; Solonet’s words relieved him.

“There is a way,” said the younger notary, with an easy air, “by which madame can meet the payment which is due to her daughter.  Madame Evangelista possesses forty thousand francs a year from an investment in the Five-per-cents, the capital of which will soon be at par, if not above it.  We may therefore reckon it at eight hundred thousand francs.  This house and garden are fully worth two hundred thousand.  On that estimate, Madame can convey by the marriage contract the titles of that property to her daughter, reserving only a life interest in it —­for I conclude that Monsieur le comte could hardly wish to leave his mother-in-law without means?  Though Madame has certainly run through her fortune, she is still able to make good that of her daughter, or very nearly so.”