“Pure slanders.”

And why not, since the Baron de Thaller, the most interested party, held himself satisfied?

To the ill-advised friends who ventured some allusions to the public rumors, he replied, according to his humor,

“My daughter can play the mischief generally, if she sees fit.  As I shall give a dowry of a million, she will always find a husband.”

Or else, “And what of it?  Do not American young ladies enjoy unlimited freedom?  Are they not constantly seen going out with young gentlemen, or walking or traveling alone?  Are they, for all that, less virtuous than our girls, who are kept under such close watch?  Do they make less faithful wives, or less excellent mothers?  Hypocrisy is not virtue.”

To a certain extent, the Manager of the Mutual Credit was right.

Already Mlle. de Thaller had had to decide upon several quite suitable offers of marriage and she had squarely refused them all.

“A husband!” she had answered each time.  “Thank you, none for me.  I have good enough teeth to eat up my dowry myself.  Later, we’ll see,—­when I’ve cut my wisdom teeth, and I am tired of my bachelor life.”

She did not seem near getting tired of it, though she pretended that she had no more illusions, was thoroughly blasee, had exhausted every sensation, and that life henceforth had no surprise in reserve for her.  Her reception of M. de Tregars was, therefore, one of Mlle. Cesarine’s least eccentricities, as was also that sudden fancy; to apply to the situation one of the most idiotic rondos of her repertoires: 

“Cashier, you’ve got the bag;
Quick on your little nag”

Neither did she spare him a single verse:  and, when she stopped,

“I see with pleasure,” said M. de Tregars, “that the embezzlement of which your father has just been the victim does not in any way offend your good humor.”

She shrugged her shoulders.

“Would you have me cry,” she said, “because the stockholders of the Baron Three Francs Sixty-eight have been swindled?  Console yourself:  they are accustomed to it.”

And, as M. de Tregars made no answer,

“And in all that,” she went on, “I see no one to pity except the wife and daughter of that old stick Favoral.”

“They are, indeed, much to be pitied.”

“They say that the mother is a good old thing.”

“She is an excellent person.”

“And the daughter?  Costeclar was crazy about her once.  He made eyes like a carp in love, as he told us, to mamma and myself, ’She is an angel, mesdames, an angel!  And when I have given her a little chic!’ Now tell me, is she really as good looking as all that?”

“She is quite good looking.”

“Better looking than me?”

“It is not the same style, mademoiselle.”

Mlle. de Thaller had stopped singing; but she had not left the piano.  Half turned towards M. de Tregars, she ran her fingers listlessly over the keys, striking a note here and there, as if to punctuate her sentences.