The white dress with its rose-colored ribbons, the Sevigne curls, Natalie’s tiny foot, her winning glance, her pretty fingers constantly employed in adjusting curls that needed no adjustment, these girlish manoeuvres like those of a peacock spreading his tail, had brought Paul to the point at which his future mother-in-law desired to see him. He was intoxicated with love, and his eyes, the sure thermometer of the soul, indicated the degree of passion at which a man commits a thousand follies.
“Natalie is so beautiful,” he whispered to the mother, “that I can conceive the frenzy which leads a man to pay for his happiness by death.”
Madame Evangelista replied with a shake of her head:—
“Lover’s talk, my dear count. My husband never said such charming things to me; but he married me without a fortune and for thirteen years he never caused me one moment’s pain.”
“Is that a lesson you are giving me?” said Paul, laughing.
“You know how I love you, my dear son,” she answered, pressing his hand. “I must indeed love you well to give you my Natalie.”
“Give me, give me?” said the young girl, waving a screen of Indian feathers, “what are you whispering about me?”
“I was telling her,” replied Paul, “how much I love you, since etiquette forbids me to tell it to you.”
“Why?”
“I fear to say too much.”