m to my conditions. They will consent, for no one's apparent
interest is injured. Madame Evangelista is very anxious to marry her
daughter; I see that in her little game--Beware of her!"

Paul returned to the salon, where he found his future mother-in-law
conversing in a low tone with Solonet. Natalie, kept outside of these
mysterious conferences, was playing with a screen. Embarrassed by her
position, she was thinking to herself: "How odd it is that they tell me
nothing of my own affairs."

The younger notary had seized, in the main, the future effect of the new
proposal, based, as it was, on the self-love of both parties, into which
his client had fallen headlong. Now, while Mathias was more than a mere
notary, Solonet was still a young man, and brought into his business
the vanity of youth. It often happens that personal conceit makes a man
forgetful of the interests of his client. In this case, Maitre Solonet,
who would not suffer the widow to think that Nestor had vanquished
Achilles, advised her to conclude the marriage on the terms proposed.
Little he cared for the future working of the marriage contract; to him,
the conditions of victory were: Madame Evangelista released from her
obligations as guardian, her future secured, and Natalie married.

"Bordeaux shall know that you have ceded eleven hundred thousand francs
to your daughter, and that you still have twenty-five thousand francs
a year left," whispered Solonet to his client. "For my part, I did not
expect to obtain such a fine result."

"But," she said, "explain to me why the creation of this entail should
have calmed the storm at once."

"It relieves their distrust of you and your daughter. An entail is
unchangeable; neither husband nor wife can touch that capital."

"Then this arrangement is positively insulting!"

"No; we call it simply precaution. The old fellow has caught you in a
net. If you refuse to consent to the entail, he can reply: 'Then your
object is to squander the fortune of my client, who, by the creation
of this entail, is protected from all such injury as securely as if the
marriage took place under the "regime dotal."'"

Solonet quieted his own scruples by reflecting: "After all, these
stipulations will take effect only in the future, by which time Madame
Evangelista will be dead and buried."

Madame Evangelista contented herself, for the present, with these
explanations, having full confidence in Solonet. She was wholly ignora