"How could such a woman consent to marry Delileo?"
"How? Yes--how? She had lost her voice, her lovers, her health. She was thirty-eight years old. He was of a good family, and still possessed the remains of a handsome fortune, of which he had already squandered the greater part in philanthropic enterprises. He spoiled and pampered her as if she were a princess, and she ... she ran away from him one year and a half after the birth of her child, your bride,--with an obscure Polish adventurer. Delileo discovered her afterward in the greatest misery, dying of consumption, in a garret; he took her home and nursed her till she died. Poor devil! He had united himself to her against the will of his family, and the counsel of his friends, he was at the end of his money--so he buried himself in the Rue Ravestein. His lot is hard; but--at least he lived a year and a half at her side!"
Alphonse de Sterny ceased, and looked down, brooding.
Gesa laid a hand on his arm.
"The memory of this woman lives so powerfully in you still, and yet you marvel that I want her daughter for my wife--her daughter, who inherits all the mother's charm, without her sinfulness?"
De Sterny smiled, no pleasant smile. "How old is she then--sixteen or seventeen, if I reckon rightly is she not?"
Gesa nodded.
"Ah! So! And you will judge already of her temperament?" He drummed a march on the table. Gesa colored. "De Sterny!" he cried after a pause. "Much as I love you I will not bear to hear you speak in that way. Do me a favor and learn to know the little one--then judge yourself. Come sometime in the evening and drink tea with us, unless you are afraid of the Rue Ravestein!"
"When you will, big child! to-morrow, day after!--You always keep early hours there. I can come before I have to go into society!"
A few minutes later Gesa took leave. De Sterny accompanied him to the door of the apartment, and called gaily after him, over the banisters. "The day after to-morrow then, about eight! I am curious to see your Capua!"--