reasure into it. I
had no other fortune when I married."

"Do you like Lanstrac?" asked Paul, addressing Natalie.

"How could I fail to like the place where you were born?" she answered.
"I wish I could see your house."

"_Our_ house," said Paul. "Do you not want to know if I shall understand
your tastes and arrange the house to suit you? Your mother had made a
husband's task most difficult; you have always been so happy! But where
love is infinite, nothing is impossible."

"My dear children," said Madame Evangelista, "do you feel willing to
stay in Bordeaux after your marriage? If you have the courage to face
the people here who know you and will watch and hamper you, so be it!
But if you feel that desire for a solitude together which can hardly be
expressed, let us go to Paris were the life of a young couple can pass
unnoticed in the stream. There alone you can behave as lovers without
fearing to seem ridiculous."

"You are quite right," said Paul, "but I shall hardly have time to get
my house ready. However, I will write to-night to de Marsay, the friend
on whom I can always count to get things done for me."

At the moment when Paul, like all young men accustomed to satisfy
their desires without previous calculation, was inconsiderately binding
himself to the expenses of a stay in Paris, Maitre Mathias entered the
salon and made a sign to his client that he wished to speak to him.

"What is it, my friend?" asked Paul, following the old man to the recess
of a window.

"Monsieur le comte," said the honest lawyer, "there is not a penny of
dowry. My advice is: put off the conference to another day, so that you
may gain time to consider your proper course."

"Monsieur Paul," said Natalie, "I have a word to say in private to you."

Though Madame Evangelista's face was calm, no Jew of the middle ages
ever suffered greater torture in his caldron of boiling oil than she was
enduring in her violet velvet gown. Solonet had pledged the marriage to
her, but she was ignorant of the means and conditions of success. The
anguish of this uncertainty was intolerable. Possibly she owed her
safety to her daughter's disobedience. Natalie had considered the advice
of her mother and noted her anxiety. When she saw the success of her
own coquetry she was struck to the heart with a variety of contradictory
thoughts. Without blaming her mother, she was half-ashamed of manoeuvres
the object of which was, undoubtedly, some personal ga