“Natalie looks very sad.”
“Would you like to be made to take a journey the day after your marriage?”
“It is very awkward.”
“I am glad I came here to-night,” said a lady. “I am now convinced of the necessity of the pomps of marriage and of wedding fetes; a scene like this is very bare and sad. If I may say what I think,” she added, in a whisper to her neighbor, “this marriage seems to me indecent.”
Madame Evangelista took Natalie in her carriage and accompanied her, alone, to Paul’s house.
“Well, mother, it is done!”
“Remember, my dear child, my last advice, and you will be a happy woman. Be his wife, and not his mistress.”
When Natalie had retired, the mother played the little comedy of flinging herself with tears into the arms of her son-in-law. It was the only provincial thing that Madame Evangelista allowed herself, but she had her reasons for it. Amid tears and speeches, apparently half wild and despairing, she obtained of Paul those concessions which all husbands make.
The next day she put the married pair into their carriage, and accompanied them to the ferry, by which the road to Paris crosses the Gironde. With a look and a word Natalie enabled her mother to see that if Paul had won the trick in the game of the contract, her revenge was beginning. Natalie was already reducing her husband to perfect obedience.