“For an old fellow who didn’t expect your batteries of grape-shot, I did pretty well, didn’t I?”

“Ha! ha! ha!” laughed Solonet.

The odious struggle in which the material welfare of a family had been so perilously near destruction was to the two notaries nothing more than a matter of professional polemics.

“I haven’t been forty years in harness for nothing,” remarked Mathias.  “Look here, Solonet,” he added, “I’m a good fellow; you shall help in drawing the deeds for the sale of those lands.”

“Thanks, my dear Mathias.  I’ll serve you in return on the very first occasion.”

While the two notaries were peacefully returning homeward, with no other sensations than a little throaty warmth, Paul and Madame Evangelista were left a prey to the nervous trepidation, the quivering of the flesh and brain which excitable natures pass through after a scene in which their interests and their feelings have been violently shaken.  In Madame Evangelista these last mutterings of the storm were overshadowed by a terrible reflection, a lurid gleam which she wanted, at any cost, to dispel.

“Has Maitre Mathias destroyed in a few minutes the work I have been doing for six months?” she asked herself.  “Was he withdrawing Paul from my influence by filling his mind with suspicion during their secret conference in the next room?”

She was standing absorbed in these thoughts before the fireplace, her elbow resting on the marble mantel-shelf.  When the porte-cochere closed behind the carriage of the two notaries, she turned to her future son-in-law, impatient to solve her doubts.

“This has been the most terrible day of my life,” cried Paul, overjoyed to see all difficulties vanish.  “I know no one so downright in speech as that old Mathias.  May God hear him, and make me peer of France!  Dear Natalie, I desire this for your sake more than for my own.  You are my ambition; I live only in you.”

Hearing this speech uttered in the accents of the heart, and noting, more especially, the limpid azure of Paul’s eyes, whose glance betrayed no thought of double meaning, Madame Evangelista’s satisfaction was complete.  She regretted the sharp language with which she had spurred him, and in the joy of success she resolved to reassure him as to the future.  Calming her countenance, and giving to her eyes that expression of tender friendship which made her so attractive, she smiled and answered:—­

“I can say as much to you.  Perhaps, dear Paul, my Spanish nature has led me farther than my heart desired.  Be what you are,—­kind as God himself,—­and do not be angry with me for a few hasty words.  Shake hands.”

Paul was abashed; he fancied himself to blame, and he kissed Madame Evangelista.

“Dear Paul,” she said with much emotion, “why could not those two sharks have settled this matter without dragging us into it, since it was so easy to settle?”