“What?” said her father, puzzled.

“Well, she looks evil when I say too much, even in joke, about her lover.  Make inquiries, but leave me to row my own boat.  My confidence ought to reassure you.”

“The Lord said, ‘Suffer little children to come unto Me.’  You are one of those who have come back again,” replied the Baron with a touch of irony.

After breakfast the dealer was announced, and the artist with his group.  The sudden flush that reddened her daughter’s face at once made the Baroness suspicious and then watchful, and the girl’s confusion and the light in her eyes soon betrayed the mystery so badly guarded in her simple heart.

Count Steinbock, dressed in black, struck the Baron as a very gentlemanly young man.

“Would you undertake a bronze statue?” he asked, as he held up the group.

After admiring it on trust, he passed it on to his wife, who knew nothing about sculpture.

“It is beautiful, isn’t it, mamma?” said Hortense in her mother’ ear.

“A statue!  Monsieur, it is less difficult to execute a statue than to make a clock like this, which my friend here has been kind enough to bring,” said the artist in reply.

The dealer was placing on the dining-room sideboard the wax model of the twelve Hours that the Loves were trying to delay.

“Leave the clock with me,” said the Baron, astounded at the beauty of the sketch.  “I should like to show it to the Ministers of the Interior and of Commerce.”

“Who is the young man in whom you take so much interest?” the Baroness asked her daughter.

“An artist who could afford to execute this model could get a hundred thousand francs for it,” said the curiosity-dealer, putting on a knowing and mysterious look as he saw that the artist and the girl were interchanging glances.  “He would only need to sell twenty copies at eight thousand francs each—­for the materials would cost about a thousand crowns for each example.  But if each copy were numbered and the mould destroyed, it would certainly be possible to meet with twenty amateurs only too glad to possess a replica of such a work.”

“A hundred thousand francs!” cried Steinbock, looking from the dealer to Hortense, the Baron, and the Baroness.

“Yes, a hundred thousand francs,” repeated the dealer.  “If I were rich enough, I would buy it of you myself for twenty thousand francs; for by destroying the mould it would become a valuable property.  But one of the princes ought to pay thirty or forty thousand francs for such a work to ornament his drawing-room.  No man has ever succeeded in making a clock satisfactory alike to the vulgar and to the connoisseur, and this one, sir, solves the difficulty.”

“This is for yourself, monsieur,” said Hortense, giving six gold pieces to the dealer.

“Never breath a word of this visit to any one living,” said the artist to his friend, at the door.  “If you should be asked where we sold the group, mention the Duc d’Herouville, the famous collector in the Rue de Varenne.”