Bertha had not attached any importance to the attentions of the young duke; but her manner of receiving this suggestion,—the
"half disdain
Perched on the pouted blossom of her lip,"—
convinced Maurice that, if she favored any suitor, her inclinations did not turn towards the duke.
"The Duke de Montauban is not ill-looking," Maurice remarked, to decoy her into some more open expression; "and he is sufficiently agreeable,—do you not think so?"
"I never thought about him," she replied, somewhat petulantly. "If I chance to look at him I never think of any one but his tailor and his hairdresser, without whom I verily believe he would have no tangible existence."
"An accomplished tailor and a skilful coiffure are all very well in their way," observed her uncle; "but a scientific cook is the grand necessity of a man's life,—a daily need,—the trebly repeated need of each day; and the education of a cook should commence in the cradle. If this point received the attention which it deserves from sanitarians, there would be fewer digestive organs out of order, and consequently fewer police reports, and a vast diminution of eccentric degradation, and moping madness and suicide, and horrors in general."
Bertha and Maurice did not dispute this sweeping assertion; for they knew it would entail upon them the necessity of encountering a battalion of arguments, which the marquis delighted to call into action to defend the ground upon which he took up his favorite position.
Count Tristan's reply to Maurice, enclosing a check for the thousand francs, was received a few days later. Maurice returned to the Jew with the money. The latter rejoiced him by vaguely hinting that there was a prospect of successful operation; but the matter would occupy time. The viscount would be good enough to call again in a week.
Maurice was too unsuspicious and too unskilled in transactions of this nature to doubt that the Jew was dealing with him in good faith. Instead of a week, he returned the next morning, and repeated his visits regularly every day. The Jew diligently fanned his hopes, assuring him that old Henriques was not to be baffled, though the parties through whose hands the jewels had passed were almost unapproachable. Very soon the merciless Israelite notified the young nobleman that further funds would be requisite, and Maurice writhed under the cruel compulsion which forced him to make a second application to his father.
Bertha had been a fortnight in Paris when the anniversary of her birthday, which for the first time had been forgotten, was in a singular manner recalled to her mind. A small package had been received for her at her uncle's residence in Bordeaux, and had been promptly forwarded to Paris. The outer cover was directed in the handwriting of her uncle's concierge; on the inner, a request, that if Mademoiselle de Merrivale were absent the parcel might be immediately forwarded to her, was written in familiar characters. Bertha had no sooner caught sight of them than she cried out,—