"Yes."
"The very day after I reached Washington I met at the evening reception at the President's house this Indian Princess, as she was called. I was no sooner presented to her than she began to exercise all her arts of fascination upon me. But my heart was steeled by its love for you against the charms of all others."
"Ah! don't stop to pay compliments; go on."
"Well, but I was good-natured, and I flattered her vanity by flirting with her a little."
"A little!" repeated the woman, curling her beautiful lip.
"Yes, only a little; for I had no idea of seriously addressing her until I discovered that she possessed in her own right one of the largest fortunes in the—world, I was going to say—and I should not have been far wrong, for she had in fact inherited three immense fortunes. This was the way of it. Her mother was the only child of a millionaire, and of course inherited the whole of her father's estate. She had also two bachelor uncles who had made immense fortunes in trade, and who left the whole to their niece, in her own right. She, dying young, bequeathed the whole unconditionally to her daughter."
"Ciel! what good luck! How much is it all put together?"
"About three millions of pounds sterling."
"Ma foi! In what does it consist?"
"It did consist in bank stock, railway shares, lead mines, city houses, iron foundries, tobacco plantations, country seats, gorillas, etc. It now consists in money."