That there was something of a mystery about this nobleman was undeniable.  Among other things, he had stated that he was a relative of the Siccatifs of Harlem—­the old family established here in New Amsterdam in the early days of the Dutch Colony.  Persons disposed to comment invidiously upon this asserted relationship, and such there were, did not fail to draw attention to the fact that the Harlem Siccatifs, without exception, were fair, while the Count Siccatif de Courtray was strikingly dark; and to the further fact that, if the distinguished American family really was akin to the Count, its several members were most harmoniously agreed to give him the cold shoulder.  With these malicious whisperings, however, Madame Carthame did not concern herself.  She was content, more than content, to take the Count as he was, and at his own valuation.  That he was a proscribed Bonapartist, as he declared himself to be, seemed to her a reasonable and entirely credible statement; and it certainly had the effect of creating about him a halo of romance.  Though not proscribed, Madame Carthame herself was a Bonapartist, and a most ardent one; a fact, it may be observed, concerning which the Count assured himself prior to the avowal of his own political convictions.  When, on the 2Oth of April, he came home wearing a cluster of violets in his buttonhole, and bearing also a bunch of these imperial flowers for Madame Carthame, and with the presentation confessed his own imperialistic faith and touched gloomily upon the sorry reward that it had brought him—­when this event occurred, Madame Carthame’s kindly feelings toward her second-floor lodger were resolved into an abiding faith and high esteem.  It was upon this auspicious day that the conviction took firm root in her mind that the Count Siccatif de Courtray was the heaven-sent husband for her daughter Rose.

That Rose approved this ambitious matrimonial project of her mother’s was a matter open to doubt; at least her conduct was such that two diametrically opposite views were entertained in regard to her intentions.  On the one hand, Madame Carthame and the Count Siccatif de Courtray believed that she had made up her mind to live in her mother’s own second-story front and be a countess.  On the other hand, Jaune d’Antimoine, whose wish, perhaps, was father to his thought, believed that she would not do anything of the sort.  Jaune gladly would have believed, also, that she cherished matrimonial intentions in quite a different, namely, an artistic, direction; but he was a modest young fellow, and suffered his hopes to be greatly diluted by his fears.  And, in truth, the conduct of Rose was so perplexing, at times so atrociously exasperating, that a person much more deeply versed in women’s ways than this young painter was, very well might have been puzzled hopelessly; for if ever a born flirt came out of France, that flirt was Rose Carthame.