Marguerite,
expert in love, reached an understanding of the real state of Felicie's
heart, she wound up their talk by saying:--

"Well, dear child, let us make sure he truly loves you, and--then--"

"Ah!" cried Felicie, laughing, "leave me to my own devices; I have a
model before my eyes."

"Saucy child!" exclaimed Marguerite, kissing her.

Though Pierquin belonged to the class of men who regard marriage as the
accomplishment of a social duty and the means of transmitting property,
and though he was indifferent to which sister he should marry so long as
both had the same name and the same dower, he did perceive that the
two were, to use his own expression, "romantic and sentimental girls,"
adjectives employed by commonplace people to ridicule the gifts which
Nature sows with grudging hand along the furrows of humanity. The lawyer
no doubt said to himself that he had better swim with the stream;
and accordingly the next day he came to see Marguerite, and took
her mysteriously into the little garden, where he began to talk
sentiment,--that being one of the clauses of the primal contract which,
according to social usage, must precede the notarial contract.

"Dear cousin," he said, "you and I have not always been of one mind as
to the best means of bringing your affairs to a happy conclusion; but
you do now, I am sure, admit that I have always been guided by a great
desire to be useful to you. Well, yesterday I spoiled my offer by a
fatal habit which the legal profession forces upon us--you understand
me? My heart did not share in the folly. I have loved you well; but I
have a certain perspicacity, legal perhaps, which obliges me to see
that I do not please you. It is my own fault; another has been more
successful than I. Well, I come now to tell you, like an honest man,
that I sincerely love your sister Felicie. Treat me therefore as a
brother; accept my purse, take what you will from it,--the more you
take the better you prove your regard for me. I am wholly at your
service--WITHOUT INTEREST, you understand, neither at twelve nor at one
quarter per cent. Let me be thought worthy of Felicie, that is all I
ask. Forgive my defects; they come from business habits; my heart is
good, and I would fling myself into the Scarpe sooner than not make my
wife happy."

"This is all satisfactory, cousin," answered Marguerite; "but my
sister's choice depends upon herself and also on my father's will."

"I know that, my dear cous