"That confounded Frenchman!" muttered the plebeian broker. "My Yankee house is turned topsyturvy by these foreigners. There's a French cook, and a French chambermaid, and the friend of the family is a Frenchman. I don't know what I'm eating, and I hardly understand a word that's said at my table. Sometimes, by way of change, they talk Italian instead of French. One might as well associate with a stack of monkeys. Out of the way, jackanapes."
"Monsieur," said the page, with true Gallic dignity, "I was about to proceed to announce monsieur."
"Monsieur can announce himself," replied Brandon, with the grin of a hyena; and proceeding up stairs, he entered the boudoir without knocking.
Mrs. Brandon was lounging on a fauteuil, in an elegant morning toilet—literally plunged and embowered in costly Brussels lace. Her delicate, bejewelled fingers were playing with the petals of an exquisite bouquet. Thanks to a good constitution, a life of ease, an accomplished milliner and an incomparable dentist, the fair Maria, though the mother of a marriageable girl, was still a lovely and fascinating woman, and Brandon, as he gazed on her superb figure, almost forgave her absurd ambition and her ruinous extravagance. Still, when he glanced at his own anxious, emaciated, and careworn features, in the splendid Versailles mirror that hung opposite, his transitory pleasure gave way to stern and bitter feelings. He merely nodded to his wife, and bowed coldly to her companion, a young man attired in the height of fashion, with dark eyes and hair, and the most superb mustache imaginable.
"Ah! my dear Meestare Brandon," said the dandy, "give me your hand. I congratulate you on such a bonne fortune—such good luck as has befallen you."
"Explain yourself, sir," said the broker.
"Avec plaisir. I have secured for you a box at the opera for the whole season—and for only five hundred dollars."
The broker whistled.
"Really nothing," said Mrs. Brandon; "only think—the best troupe we have yet had—a new prima donna and a new basso."
"Fiddlestick!" said the matter-of-fact husband. "What does it amount to?"