that blooms, finding every one about her
eager to do her will. She was ignorant of the price of things; she
knew neither the value of money, nor whence it came, how it should be
managed, and how spent. Possibly she thought that every household had
cooks and coachmen, lady's-maids and footmen, as the fields have hay and
the trees their fruits. To her, beggars and paupers, fallen trees and
waste lands seemed in the same category. Pampered and petted as her
mother's hope, no fatigue was allowed to spoil her pleasure. Thus she
bounded through life as a courser on his steppe, unbridled and unshod.

Six month's after Paul's arrival the Pink of Fashion and the Queen of
Balls met in presence of the highest society of the town of Bordeaux.
The two flowers looked at each other with apparent coldness, and
mutually thought each other charming. Interested in watching the effects
of the meeting, Madame Evangelista divined in the expression of Paul's
eyes the feelings within him, and she muttered to herself, "He will be
my son-in-law." Paul, on the other hand, said to himself, as he looked
at Natalie, "She will be my wife."

The wealth of the Evangelistas, proverbial in Bordeaux, had remained in
Paul's mind as a memory of his childhood. Thus the pecuniary conditions
were known to him from the start, without necessitating those
discussions and inquiries which are as repugnant to a timid mind as to a
proud one. When some persons attempting to say to Paul a few flattering
phrases as to Natalie's manner, language, and beauty, ending by remarks,
cruelly calculated to deter him, on the lavish extravagance of the
Evangelistas, the Pink of Fashion replied with a disdain that was
well-deserved by such provincial pettiness. This method of receiving
such speeches soon silenced them; for he now set the tone to the ideas
and language as well as to the manners of those about him. He had
imported from his travels a certain development of the Britannic
personality with its icy barriers, also a tone of Byronic pessimism
as to life, together with English plate, boot-polish, ponies, yellow
gloves, cigars, and the habit of galloping.

It thus happened that Paul escaped the discouragements hitherto
presented to marriageable men by dowagers and young girls. Madame
Evangelista began by asking him to formal dinners on various occasions.
The Pink of Fashion would not, of course, miss festivities to which none
but the most distinguished young men of the tow