It was her father whom she called thus, since the day when she had discovered that there was a German coin called thaler, which represents three francs and sixty-eight centimes in French currency.

“You know, I suppose,” she went on, “that papa has just been badly stuck?”

M. de Tregars was excusing himself in vague terms; but it was one of Mlle. Cesarine’s habits never to listen to the answers which were made to her questions.

“Favoral,” she continued, “papa’s cashier, has just started on an international picnic.  Did you know him?”

“Very little.”

“An old fellow, always dressed like a country sexton, and with a face like an undertaker.  And the Baron Three Francs Sixty-eight, an old bird, was fool enough to be taken in by him!  For he was taken in.  He had a face like a man whose chimney is on fire, when he came to tell us, mamma and myself, that Favoral had gone off with twelve millions.”

“And has he really carried off that enormous sum?”

“Not entire, of course, because it was not since day before yesterday only that he began digging into the Mutual Credit’s pile.  There were years that this venerable old swell was leading a somewhat-variegated existence, in company with rather-funny ladies, you know.  And as he was not exactly calculated to be adored at par, why, it cost papa’s stockholders a pretty lively premium.  But, anyhow, he must have carried off a handsome nugget.”

And, bouncing to the piano, she began an accompaniment loud enough to crack the window-panes, singing at the same time the popular refrain of the “Young Ladies of Pautin”: 

Cashier, you’ve got the bag;
Quick on your little nag,
And then, ho, ho, for Belgium!

Any one but Marius de Tregars would have been doubtless strangely surprised at Mlle. de Thaller’s manners.  But he had known her for some time already:  he was familiar with her past life, her habits, her tastes, and her pretensions.  Until the age of fifteen, Mlle. Cesarine had remained shut up in one of those pleasant Parisian boarding-schools, where young ladies are initiated into the great art of the toilet, and from which they emerge armed with the gayest theories, knowing how to see without seeming to look, and to lie boldly without blushing; in a word, ripe for society.  The directress of the boarding-school, a lady of the ton, who had met with reverses, and who was a good deal more of a dressmaker than a teacher, said of Mlle. Cesarine, who paid her three thousand five hundred francs a year,

“She gives the greatest hopes for the future; and I shall certainly make a superior woman of her.”

But the opportunity was not allowed her.  The Baroness de Thaller discovered, one morning, that it was impossible for her to live without her daughter, and that her maternal heart was lacerated by a separation which was against the sacred laws of nature.  She took her home, therefore, declaring that nothing, henceforth, not even her marriage, should separate them, and that she should finish herself the education of the dear child.  From that moment, in fact, whoever saw the Baroness de Thaller would also see Mlle. Cesarine following in her wake.