“Oho!” said Monsieur Verney to Madame Verney, “so we are promised a daughter-in-law already!”
“That pleases me very much,” said Madame Verney, smiling. “I hope that Mademoiselle Lucie will grow up as good as she is pretty, and then I shall be very glad to have her for a daughter-in-law.”
Then his mother kissed him, and Paul got up and walked on with his father and mother, holding a hand of each and wondering if any boy ever had such a kind father and mother. They joked him about Lucie, but Paul did not mind that. He rather liked it, now that the murder was out. Presently, when Paul had gone off to play and the Verneys were sitting at a little table by themselves on the terrace, Monsieur Verney suddenly fell into a brown study, and, after a few minutes, bringing his fist down on the table and making the glasses ring, said to Madame Verney:
“I know who that little girl is now—I could not place her at first. She is the half-sister of Madame Ravenel. The child is allowed to visit her once a year—what can the family be thinking of to permit it?”
Madame Verney knew Sophie Ravenel’s history perfectly well, as did everybody in Bienville, and she knew more than most people; for she said to Monsieur Verney:
“At the time when Madame Delorme left her husband for Ravenel, this child, whom she had brought up from her birth, was taken away from her by her grandmother, their father’s mother, who is also the grandmother of Madame Ravenel. This little girl’s mother was an American, I am told. The child, I know, has been permitted to visit Madame Ravenel before, but this will scarcely be allowed after she is two or three years older. I have also heard that she has a large fortune through her mother, in her own right.”
At this the great maternal instinct welled up in Madame Verney’s heart. Why should not her Paul, the best of boys, marry a girl with a large fortune and a position like Lucie’s, which was far above Paul’s? She began to dream about Paul’s matrimonial prospects—dreams which had begun when he was a little pink baby lying in his cradle. The Verneys were not rich, nor distinguished, nor was there anything except love which would be likely to provide Paul with a wife suitable to his merits. Madame Verney, following up this dream concerning Paul, began secretly to pity Madame Ravenel, and argued that, after all, nothing about that unfortunate lady could reflect on Lucie.
Meanwhile Lucie, kneeling down on the edge of the basin of the fountain, looked into it and saw there a church brilliantly lighted, with palms and flowers all about, and full of gaily-dressed ladies and officers in uniform. And then the organ sounded and up the aisle came marching herself, in a white satin gown and lace veil; and she leaned on the arm of a young officer with a sword and a helmet with a horse-hair plume in it, and he had the honest eyes of Paul Verney.
At the end of the week Lucie vanished from Paul’s sight, but not from his memory. According to all the laws of fitness, Paul, the most honest, straightforward, matter-of-fact, obedient little fellow in the world, should have found his counterpart in the shape of another Denise Duval of his own class; for little Denise was as honest, as correct, as matter-of-fact and as obedient as Paul Verney. But, behold how it works! Paul fell in love with the vivacious, sprightly, charming Lucie, while Toni had determined to link his fate with the irreproachable and demure Denise.