"Bravo, mon cher! You are getting on famously. That is Rose herself—as radiant as she appears on the stage, when the focus of a lorgnette has excluded all the stupid and ennuyantes figures that surround her."
The speaker was Sir Frederic Stanley, an English baronet, now some months in Paris, where he had plunged into all the gayeties of the season. He was a handsome man, of middle age, whose features bore the impress of dissipation.
"You know the original, then?" asked the painter, somewhat coldly.
"Know her! My dear fellow, I don't know any body else, as the Yankees say. Why, I have the entry of the Gaité, and pass all my evenings behind the scenes. I flatter myself—but no matter. I have taken a fancy to that picture: what do you say to a hundred louis for it?"
"It is not for me to dispose of it."
"You have succeeded so well, you wish to keep it for yourself—eh? Double the price, and let me have it!"
"Impossible, Sir Frederic. It is painted for Mlle. d'Amour herself, and she designs it for a present."
"Say no more," said the baronet, with a self-satisfied smile. "I think I could name the happy individual."
Ernest would not gratify his visitor by a question, and the latter, finding the artist reserved and distrait, suddenly recollected the races at Chantilly, and took his leave.
"Can it be possible," thought the painter, "that Rose has suffered her affections to repose on that conceited, purse-proud, elderly Englishman? O, woman! woman! how readily you barter the wealth of your heart for a handful of gold!"