"And he will fare like the five others," said the girl ironically, as
she looked at the seal.

"Six others, miss. I left one in Lorraine, who, to this day, would fetch
the moon down for me."

"This one does better than that," said Hortense; "he has brought down
the sun."

"Where can that be turned into money?" asked her cousin. "It takes wide
lands to benefit by the sunshine."

These witticisms, fired in quick retort, and leading to the sort of
giddy play that may be imagined, had given cause for the laughter which
had added to the Baroness' troubles by making her compare her
daughter's future lot with the present, when she was free to indulge the
light-heartedness of youth.

"But to give you a gem which cost him six months of work, he must be
under some great obligations to you?" said Hortense, in whom the silver
seal had suggested very serious reflections.

"Oh, you want to know too much at once!" said her cousin. "But, listen,
I will let you into a little plot."

"Is your lover in it too?"

"Oh, ho! you want so much to see him! But, as you may suppose, an old
maid like Cousin Betty, who had managed to keep a lover for five years,
keeps him well hidden.--Now, just let me alone. You see, I have neither
cat nor canary, neither dog nor a parrot, and the old Nanny Goat wanted
something to pet and tease--so I treated myself to a Polish Count."

"Has he a moustache?"

"As long as that," said Lisbeth, holding up her shuttle filled with gold
thread. She always took her lace-work with her, and worked till dinner
was served.

"If you ask too many questions, you will be told nothing," she went on.
"You are but two-and-twenty, and you chatter more than I do though I am
forty-two--not to say forty-three."

"I am listening; I am a wooden image," said Hortense.

"My lover has finished a bronze group ten inches high," Lisbeth went on.
"It represents Samson slaying a lion, and he has kept it buried till it
is so rusty that you might believe it to be as old as Samson himself.
This fine piece is shown at the shop of one of the old curiosity sellers
on the Place du Carrousel, near my lodgings. Now, your father knows
Monsieur Popinot, the Minister of Commerce and Agriculture, and the
Comte de Rastignac, and if he would mention the group to them as a fine
antique he had seen by chance! It seems that such things take the fancy
of your grand folks, who don't care so much about gold lace, and that my
man's fortune would b