Here Pompilard ceased, and looked up. There was a stir in the court-room. Their Honors had re-entered and taken seats. The messenger with the missing paper had returned. The presiding judge, after a long and tantalizing preamble, in the course of which Charlton was alternately elevated and depressed, at length summed up, in a few intelligible words, the final decision of the court. Charlton fainted.
Pompilard’s lawyers bent down their heads, as if certain papers suddenly demanded their close scrutiny; but Pompilard himself was radiant. Everybody stared at him, and handsomely did he baffle everybody by his imperturbable good humor. It is not every day that one has an opportunity of seeing how a fellow-being is affected by the winning or the losing of a million of dollars. No one could have guessed from Pompilard’s appearance whether he had won or lost. Unfortunately he had lost; and Charlton had reached the acme of his hopes, mortal or immortal,—he was a millionnaire.
Pompilard took the news home to his wife in the little old double house at Harlem; and her only comment was: “Poor dear Melissa! I had hoped to make her a present of a furnished cottage on the North River.”
The conversation was immediately turned to the subject of Toussaint, and one would have thought, hearing these strange foolish people talk, that the old negro’s exit saddened them far more than the loss of their fortune. Angelica, Pompilard’s widowed daughter, entered. After her came Netty, the elf, now almost a young lady. She carried under her arm a portfolio, filled with such drawings of ships, beaches, and rocks as she could find in occasional excursions to Long Island, under the patronage of Mrs. Maloney, the tailor’s wife.
Julia and Mary Ireton, daughters of Angelica, came in.
“Which of my little nieces will take my portfolio up-stairs?” asked Netty.
“I will, aunt,” said the dutiful Mary; and off she ran with it.
“Poor Melissa! We shall now have to put off the wedding,” sighed Angelica, on learning the result of the lawsuit.
“No such thing! It sha’n’t be put off!” said Pompilard.
Netty threw her arms round the old man’s neck, kissed him, and exclaimed: “Bravo, father of mine! Stick to that! It isn’t half lively enough in this house. We want a few more here to make it jolly. Why can’t we have such high times as they have in at the Maloneys’? There we made such a noise the other night that the police knocked at the door.”