"Yes, she'll cut up rough. By George! I quite envy you your young genius."
"She isn't mine," said Falkenstein, bitterly.
"She might be if you chose."
"Poor little thing!—yes. But love is too expensive a luxury for a ruined man, even if—— The devil take this key, why won't it unlock? You're off to half a dozen parties I suppose, Tom?"
"And where are you going?"
"Nowhere."
"What! going to bed at half-past ten?"
"There is no particular sin in going to bed at half-past ten, is there?" said Waldemar, impatiently. "I haven't the stuff in me for balls and such things. I'm sick of them. Good-night, old fellow."
He went up-stairs to his room, threw himself on his bed, and, lighting his pipe, lay smoking and thinking while the Abbey clock tolled the hours one after another. The longs yeux bleus haunted him, for Waldemar had already too many chains upon him not to shrink from adding to them the Golden Fetters of a fresh passion, and marriage, unless a rich one, was certain to bring about him all his entanglements. He resolved to seek her no more, to check the demonstrative affection which, like Esmeralda, "à la fois naïve et passionnée," she had no thought of concealing from him, and which, as Falkenstein's conscience told him, he had done everything to foster. "What is a man worth if he hasn't strength of will?" he muttered, as he tossed on his bed. "And yet, poor little Valérie—— Pshaw! all women learn quickly enough to forget!"
Some ten days after he was calling in Lowndes Square. True as yet to his resolution, he had avoided the tête-à-tête walks in the Gardens; and Valérie keenly felt the change in his manner, though in what he did for her he was as kind as ever. The successful run of "Scarlet and White," the praises of its talents, its promises of future triumphs—all the admiration which, despite Bella's efforts to keep her back, the yeux bleus excited—all were valueless, if, as she vaguely feared, she had lost "Count Waldemar." The play had made a great sensation, and the Cashrangers had taken a box the night before, as they made a point of following the lead and seeing everything, though they generally forswore theatres as not quite ton. Pah! these people, "qui se couchent roturiers et se lèvent nobles," they paint their lilies with such superabundant coloring, that we see, at a glance, the flowers come not out of a conservatory but out of an atelier.