"On business," murmured she, almost inaudibly, with a bitter smile.
Gotzkowsky continued—
"Young Count Saldem applied to me yesterday for your hand."
"Count Saldem?" asked Elise. "I hardly know him. I have only spoken to him twice in the saloon of Countess Herzberg."
"That does not prevent him from loving you ardently," said Gotzkowsky, with scarcely perceptible irony. "Yes, Elise, he loves you so ardently that he would overcome all obstacles of rank and make you a genuine countess, if I will only promise to endow you with half a million."
The habitually pale countenance of Elise suddenly assumed life and color. She drew herself up and threw her head proudly back.
"Do you wish to sell me, father? Do you wish to give some value to this noble nonentity by the present of half a million, and will his lordship be kind enough in return to take the trifling burden of my person into the bargain?"
Her father gazed at her glowing countenance with eyes beaming with joy; but he quickly suppressed this emotion, and reassumed a serious air.
"Yes," he said, "the good count, in consideration of half a million, will consent to raise the manufacturer's daughter to the rank of a countess. But for a whole million we can obtain still more; we can rise yet higher in the scale. If I will advance his uncle, Prince Saldem, half a million to redeem his mortgaged estates, the prince promises to adopt the nephew, your suitor, as his son. You would then be a princess, Elise, and I would have the proud satisfaction of calling a prince my son."
"As if the king would consent to a nobleman thus demeaning himself!" cried Elise; "as if he would graciously allow the count so far to degrade himself!"