He paused, for the door-bell rang. Flavia’s heart gave a bound of intense joy.
“He has come!” gasped she, and, with a strong effort to retain her composure, she added, “I will obey you, my dear father; I will not come here again until I have entirely regained my composure. Do not fear, and I will show you that your daughter can act a part as well as any other woman.”
She fled from the room as the door opened, but it was not Paul who made his appearance, but some other guests—a stout manufacturer and his wife, the latter gorgeously dressed, but with scarcely a word to say for herself. For this evening the banker had issued invitations to twenty of his friends, and among this number Paul would scarcely be noticed. He in due time made his appearance with Dr. Hortebise, who had volunteered to introduce him into good society. Paul felt ill at ease; he had just come from the hands of a fashionable tailor, who, thanks to Mascarin’s influence, had in forty-eight hours prepared an evening suit of such superior cut that the young man hardly knew himself in it. Paul had suffered a good deal from conflicting emotions after the visit to Van Klopen’s, and more than once regretted the adhesion that he had given to Mascarin’s scheme; but a visit the next day from Hortebise, and the knowledge that the fashionable physician was one of the confederates, had reconciled him to the position he had promised to assume.
He was moreover struck with Flavia’s charms, and dazzled with the accounts of her vast prospective fortune. To him, Hortebise, gay, rich, and careless, seemed the incarnation of happiness, and contributed greatly to stifle the voice of Paul’s conscience. He would, however, perhaps have hesitated had he known what the locket contained that dangled so ostentatiously from the doctor’s chain.
Before they reached the banker’s door, driven in the doctor’s elegant brougham, a similar one to which Paul mentally declared he would have, as soon as circumstances would permit, the young man’s mentor spoke.
“Let me say a few words to you. You have before you a chance which is seldom afforded to any young man, whatever his rank and social standing. Mind that you profit by it.”
“You may be sure I will,” said Paul, with a smile of self-complacency.
“Good, dear boy; but let me fortify your courage with a little of my experience. Do you know what an heiress really is?”
“Well, really——”
“Permit me to continue. An heiress and more so if she is an only child, is generally a very disagreeable person, headstrong, capricious, and puffed up with her own importance. She is utterly spoiled by the flattery to which she has been accustomed from her earliest years, and thinks that all the world is made to bend before her.”