"Is it finally arranged?" said one of the leading personages of the town to Madame Evangelista.
"We had so many documents to read and sign that I fear we are rather late," she replied; "but perhaps we are excusable.""As for me, I heard nothing," said Natalie, giving her hand to her lover to open the ball.
"Both of those young persons are extravagant, and the mother is not of a kind to check them," said a dowager.
"But they have founded an entail, I am told, worth fifty thousand francs a year.""Pooh!"
"In that I see the hand of our worthy Monsieur Mathias," said a magistrate. "If it is really true, he has done it to save the future of the family.""Natalie is too handsome not to be horribly coquettish. After a couple of years of marriage," said one young woman, "I wouldn't answer for Monsieur de Manerville's happiness in his home.""The Pink of Fashion will then need staking," said Solonet, laughing.
"Don't you think Madame Evangelista looks annoyed?" asked another.
"But, my dear, I have just been told that all she is able to keep is twenty-five thousand francs a year, and what is that to her?""Penury!"
"Yes, she has robbed herself for Natalie. Monsieur de Manerville has been so exacting--""Extremely exacting," put in Maitre Solonet. "But before long he will be peer of France. The Maulincours and the Vidame de Pamiers will use their influence. He belongs to the faubourg Saint-Germain.""Oh! he is received there, and that is all," said a lady, who had tried to obtain him as a son-in-law. "Mademoiselle Evangelista, as the daughter of a merchant, will certainly not open the doors of the chapter-house of Cologne to him!""She is grand-niece to the Duke of Casa-Reale.""Through the female line!"
The topic was presently exhausted. The card-players went to the tables, the young people danced, the supper was served, and the ball was not over till morning, when the first gleams of the coming day whitened the windows.
Having said adieu to Paul, who was the last to go away, Madame Evangelista went to her daughter's room; for her own had been taken by the architect to enlarge the scene of the fete. Though Natalie and her mother were overcome with sleep, they said a few words to each other as soon as they were alone.
"Tell me, mother dear, what was the matter with you?""My darling, I learned this evening to what lengths a mother's tenderness can go. You know nothing of business, and you are ignorant of the suspicions to which my integrity has been exposed. I have trampled my pride under foot, for your happiness and my reputation were at stake.""Are you talking of the diamonds? Poor boy, he wept; he did not want them; I have them.""Sleep now, my child. We will talk business when we wake--for," she added, sighing, "you and I have business now; another person has come between us.""Ah! my dear mother, Paul will never be an obstacle to our happiness, yours and mine," murmured Natalie, as she went to sleep.
"Poor darling! she little knows that the man has ruined her."Madame Evangelista's soul was seized at that moment with the first idea of avarice, a vice to which many become a prey as they grow aged.
It came into her mind to recover in her daughter's interest the whole of the property left by her husband. She told herself that her honor demanded it. Her devotion to Natalie made her, in a moment, as shrewd and calculating as she had hitherto been careless and wasteful. She resolved to turn her capital to account, after investing a part of it in the Funds, which were then selling at eighty francs. A passion often changes the whole character in a moment; an indiscreet person becomes a diplomatist, a coward is suddenly brave. Hate made this prodigal woman a miser. Chance and luck might serve the project of vengeance, still undefined and confused, which she would now mature in her mind. She fell asleep, muttering to herself, "To-morrow!" By an unexplained phenomenon, the effects of which are familiar to all thinkers, her mind, during sleep, marshalled its ideas, enlightened them, classed them, prepared a means by which she was to rule Paul's life, and showed her a plan which she began to carry out on that very to-morrow.
