As to Bettina, around her was a maddening whirl, an orgy of adulation.  Such fortune!  Such beauty!  Miss Percival arrived in Paris on the 15th of April; a fortnight had not passed before the offers of marriage began to pour upon her.  In the course of that first year, she might, had she wished it, have been married thirty-four times, and to what a variety of suitors!

They asked her hand for a young exile, who, under certain circumstances, might be called to ascend a throne—­a very small one, it is true, but a throne nevertheless.

They asked her hand for a young duke, who would make a great figure at Court when France—­as was inevitable—­should recognize her errors, and bow down before her legitimate masters.

They asked her hand for a young prince, who would have a place on the steps of the throne when France—­as was inevitable—­should again knit together the chain of the Napoleonic traditions.

They asked her hand for a young Republican deputy, who had just made a most brilliant debut in the Chamber, and for whom the future reserved the most splendid destiny, for the Republic was now established in France on the most indestructible basis.

They asked her hand for a young Spaniard of the purest lineage, and she was given to understand that the ‘contrat’ would be signed in the palace of a queen, who does not live far from the Arc de Triomphe.  Besides, one can find her address in the ‘Almanach Bottin’, for at the present day, there are queens who have their address in Bottin between an attorney and a druggist; it is only the kings of France who no longer live in France.

They asked her hand for the son of a peer of England, and for the son of a member of the highest Viennese aristocracy; for the son of a Parisian banker, and for the son of a Russian ambassador; for a Hungarian count, and for an Italian prince; and also for various excellent young men who were nothing and had nothing—­neither name nor fortune; but Bettina had granted them a waltz, and, believing themselves irresistible, they hoped that they had caused a flutter of that little heart.

But up to the present moment nothing had touched that little heart, and the reply had been the same to all “No! no!” again “No!” always “No!”

Some days after that performance of Aida, the two sisters had a rather long conversation on this great, this eternal question of marriage.  A certain name had been pronounced by Mrs. Scott which had provoked on the part of Miss Percival the most decided and most energetic refusal, and Susie had laughingly said to her sister: 

“But, Bettina, you will be obliged to end by marrying.”

“Yes, certainly, but I should be so sorry to marry without love.  It seems to me that before I could resolve to do such a thing I must be in danger of dying an old maid, and I am not yet that.”

“No, not yet.”

“Let us wait, let us wait.”

“Let us wait.  But among all these lovers whom you have been dragging after you for the last year, there have been some very nice, very amiable, and it is really a little strange if none of them—­”