They went on quietly among the crowd. People turned round to look at this good-looking fellow and this charming little doll. A well-known painter said: "What a pretty pair. They go capitally together."
George thought: "If I had been really clever, this is the girl I should have married. It was possible. How is it I did not think of it? How did I come to take that other one? What a piece of stupidity. We always act too impetuously, and never reflect sufficiently."
And envy, bitter envy, sank drop by drop into his mind like a gall, embittering all his pleasures, and rendering existence hateful.
Susan was saying: "Oh! do come often, Pretty-boy; we will go in for all manner of things now, papa is so rich. We will amuse ourselves like madcaps."
He answered, still following up his idea: "Oh! you will marry now. You will marry some prince, a ruined one, and we shall scarcely see one another."
She exclaimed, frankly: "Oh! no, not yet. I want someone who pleases me, who pleases me a great deal, who pleases me altogether. I am rich enough for two."
He smiled with a haughty and ironical smile, and began to point out to her people that were passing, very noble folk who had sold their rusty titles to the daughters of financiers like herself, and who now lived with or away from their wives, but free, impudent, known, and respected. He concluded with: "I will not give you six months before you are caught with that same bait. You will be a marchioness, a duchess or a princess, and will look down on me from a very great height, miss."
She grew indignant, tapped him on the arm with her fan, and vowed that she would marry according to the dictates of her heart.
He sneered: "We shall see about all that, you are too rich."
She remarked: "But you, too, have come in for an inheritance."