me. She was also
seized with a jealous curiosity which is easily conceived. She wanted to
find out if Paul loved her well enough to rise above the obstacles that
her mother foresaw and which she now saw clouding the face of the old
lawyer. These ideas and sentiments prompted her to an action of loyalty
which became her well. But, for all that, the blackest perfidy could not
have been as dangerous as her present innocence.

"Paul," she said in a low voice, and she so called him for the first
time, "if any difficulties as to property arise to separate us, remember
that I free you from all engagements, and will allow you to let the
blame of such a rupture rest on me."

She put such dignity into this expression of her generosity that Paul
believed in her disinterestedness and in her ignorance of the strange
fact that his notary had just told to him. He pressed the young girl's
hand and kissed it like a man to whom love is more precious than wealth.
Natalie left the room.

"Sac-a-papier! Monsieur le comte, you are committing a great folly,"
said the old notary, rejoining his client.

Paul grew thoughtful. He had expected to unite Natalie's fortune with
his own and thus obtain for his married life an income of one hundred
thousand francs a year; and however much a man may be in love he cannot
pass without emotion and anxiety from the prospect of a hundred thousand
to the certainty of forty-six thousand a year and the duty of providing
for a woman accustomed to every luxury.

"My daughter is no longer here," said Madame Evangelista, advancing
almost regally toward her son-in-law and his notary. "May I be told what
is happening?"

"Madame," replied Mathias, alarmed at Paul's silence, "an obstacle which
I fear will delay us has arisen--"

At these words, Maitre Solonet issued from the little salon and cut
short the old man's speech by a remark which restored Paul's composure.
Overcome by the remembrance of his gallant speeches and his lover-like
behavior, he felt unable to disown them or to change his course. He
longed, for the moment, to fling himself into a gulf; Solonet's words
relieved him.

"There is a way," said the younger notary, with an easy air, "by
which madame can meet the payment which is due to her daughter. Madame
Evangelista possesses forty thousand francs a year from an investment
in the Five-per-cents, the capital of which will soon be at par, if not
above it. We may therefore reckon it at eight hundr