"No, Aline; I will follow your advice. I will try to conquer my prejudice--for I confess that my dislike of Nanette is prejudice--but I cannot promise more. I will not testify towards her the dislike with which she inspires me, but I cannot command my confidence, and I cannot pretend to show her any."
"She has no right at present to ask that you should. Your confidence in her must be the result of faithful performance of her duties; and I hope she will succeed in winning it, for you are too dear and good not to resign a prejudice as soon as you know that it is unjust."
"I will try, my darling Aline," said Eva, taking her friend's hand and tenderly kissing it, "I will try, and perhaps I shall succeed since you are with me, for you are, as I said, my good angel. When I look into your kind, loving eyes, and hear your gentle words, I think I can be better; my wild, impulsive nature grows calm. I am not dear and good, as you call me, Aline. I know I am not, but I want to be so. When I see your heavenly gentleness and repose, I feel how hateful are my hasty judgments, my sharp hard words, my unfeminine obstinacy. I long to be like you, but I cannot; I forget all my good resolutions as soon as I am provoked. I know how odious this is, and, when I think of it, I cannot conceive how you, who are so infinitely better and gentler than I, can love me. Oh, if I could only be like you!"
Aline returned her friend's kiss, and said, with a smile, "Who would believe that the charming Eva could be guilty of such folly, that the proud beauty whom all adore could wish to resemble poor insignificant me, whom no one cares for except the friend whose affection blinds her? No, stay as you are, dear, for as you are you conquer every heart."
The lovely, gentle smile that had transfigured Eva's face as she had caressed her friend vanished at Aline's last words, her dark eyes flashed, and the lines about her mouth grew hard. "Yes," she said, bitterly, "as I am I conquer the hearts of all the men who have set their hearts on my wretched millions, the most unfortunate inheritance which my good father could have bequeathed to me. He never dreamed, while he laboured night and day to give wealth to his darling child, that this miserable money would be the curse of her existence, poisoning her very soul!"
Aline looked at her, with a smile. "If your wealth is your greatest misfortune," she said, gayly, "I am afraid you will find but little sympathy for it among your heartless fellow-mortals, and that you will be obliged to learn to endure with stoicism the burden of your millions."
"You too, Aline!" Eva cried, reproachfully. "Can you consider wealth a blessing? I know perfectly well that others envy me, but if they dreamed what misery this wretched money has brought me, how it daily embitters every enjoyment of life, filling my mind with distrust and suspicion, making me despise those about me, they would give me pity instead of envy. Wherever I go I am received with delight and loaded with courtesies. I? No, my millions! I represent to these sordid souls their idol,--wealth. I am nothing to them but the heiress, and as such beautiful, lovely, talented, fêted and caressed wherever I go. Have I not known this from my earliest childhood? Gray-headed servants cringed and yielded to every wish of the spoiled wayward child, finding all that she did charming and attractive because she was an heiress. Can I be happy in kindness shown not to me but to my money? As soon as I appear in society all the men vie with each other in doing me homage. One flatters me, another exerts all his wit to entertain me, a third sighs and languishes at my feet,--and it is all a lie, all wretched hypocrisy! These very men who flatter and woo me would never accord me a moment's notice if I were poor. Oh it is hard to be obliged to repeat over and over to one's self, 'You yourself are nothing; these wretches adore your millions, not you!' What do they care although I treat them with the greatest arrogance and contempt? I am rich, and all I say and do is charming, and would be although I united in my one character every possible vice. I despise them and show them that I do so, and they adore me! They sue for my hand and not one thinks whether I can be a faithful, loving wife. I bring the man whom I marry millions, and who cares whether a heart accompanies them? The more persistently they pay court to me the more I am humiliated in my own eyes, the more thoroughly I hate these miserable, sordid men! Yes, I hate them so thoroughly that even that vain aristocrat, Count Waldheim, and that blasé fop, Paul Delmar, seem delightful to me, only because I know that they never think of marrying me; they at least are not to be bought with my money. Waldheim's pride of birth protects him from such degradation, and Delmar is richer than I; he wants none of my fortune."
"Poor child!" Aline said, sadly.
"Yes, you are right now!" Eva continued, with emotion. "I am poor, terribly poor; in the midst of my wealth I am destitute of everything that constitutes happiness. It is a sad fate, indeed, never to be loved for one's self alone!"
"Never, Eva?" Aline asked, reproachfully. "Do you mistrust me?"