“Two hundred and fifty millions of francs! Good Lord! That’s a pleasing sum!”
“It might have been,” he argued. “But now....”
“I beg your pardon, it’s just exactly now that they’ll come in handy. Think of it! First of all, a big steam-yacht, ... they’re not cheap toys. A special private car....”
“But I have those already,” he mourned. “I became heir to my father’s whole outfit, lock, stock, and barrel. There’s not a thing to look forward to any more!”
“Dear, dear! What it is to be pampered.” She rose and, bending over him, smoothed his hard little apology for a pillow. “I must go and dress for dinner,” she explained. “I wish I didn’t have to leave you here alone.”
He pressed his lips to her hand as it flitted beside his head. “You have been so good to me, so very, very good,” he said, with emotion, “I hate to think I am leaving you to-morrow, never to see you again.”
“And why that, pray?” she demanded.
“Because,” he said—“because there seems to me no possibility, even with ‘my big yacht,’ to come once more and darken your doors with the memories I would unavoidably suggest.”
“I don’t agree with you at all,” she asserted; “but we will come back to this to-morrow morning. Now go to sleep as soon as you can, like a good child. Buènas noches!”
“Felices sueños!” he murmured, raising his eyes wistfully. “You,” he added, “seem determined to heap coals of scriptural fire upon undeserving heads. Do you always return good for evil?”