“We had so many documents to read and sign that I fear we are rather late,” she replied; “but perhaps we are excusable.”
“As for me, I heard nothing,” said Natalie, giving her hand to her lover to open the ball.
“Both of those young persons are extravagant, and the mother is not of a kind to check them,” said a dowager.
“But they have founded an entail, I am told, worth fifty thousand francs a year.”
“Pooh!”
“In that I see the hand of our worthy Monsieur Mathias,” said a magistrate. “If it is really true, he has done it to save the future of the family.”
“Natalie is too handsome not to be horribly coquettish. After a couple of years of marriage,” said one young woman, “I wouldn’t answer for Monsieur de Manerville’s happiness in his home.”
“The Pink of Fashion will then need staking,” said Solonet, laughing.
“Don’t you think Madame Evangelista looks annoyed?” asked another.
“But, my dear, I have just been told that all she is able to keep is twenty-five thousand francs a year, and what is that to her?”