Unlocking it, he drew from thence various parchments of official aspect, with huge seals appended, and displayed them to the smiling inamorata.
"These are the rewards with which my country has honored my poor services," he said, with humility. "These papers attest to my right to wear these titles you have just heard, madame. Voila! 'To the Count of Santo Spirito, Turin,' and 'To the Knight of the Order of Three Sicilys.' Mon ange, what more can I say?"
A wicked smile was playing around her mouth.
"I accept your statements, chevalier—and yourself!" she murmured, with an exquisite side glance.
The little chevalier beamed with triumph, and bowed low over the lovely hand which she extended, and then she snatched it quickly from him, made a queenly obeisance, and vanished like a spirit from his sight.
Madame Hesslein was seen no more until the steamer entered New York; she was either ill or coy; in reply to the chevalier's tender reproaches she declared for the first named, although her flashing eyes and healthy appearance emphatically contradicted the assertion.
What a dream of joy tinctured with horrible doubts the succeeding month was for poor little Calembours! To-day she was amiable, gay, bewitching; to-morrow she would be locked in her room, and would send down a frantic entreaty to the good fiance to leave her in peace; presently she would reward his importunities by flitting into his presence, white, vengeful, and torturing him with covert taunts and maddening allusions to his forgotten past.
And yet she was so beautiful, and so changeful, and so reckless that the wild Bohemian fire blazed up in the poor little man's soul, and he could not help loving her with a devotion worthy of a better object.
He expended his hoarded gains in loading her with costly gifts; and with mad prodigality assumed a splendor of estate which drained his finances to the lowest ebb; anxious only to win her for his own and calmly leaving the denouement until after the happy day, when madame could not help herself.
How he hoped to obtain her forgiveness when she discovered all, Heaven knows; but love not seldom infatuates men and goads them on to their complete ruin.