“And then—there is something else. You saw my brother in a great castle and on a great estate, but he is not rich, and I am very poor.”
Cartaret laughed.
“Was that what was on your mind? My dear, I’m rich—I’m frightfully rich!”
“Rich?” Her tone was all incredulity.
“It happened the day you left Paris. Oh, I know I ought to have told you at the castle, but I forgot it. You see, there was so little time to talk to you and so many more important things to say.”
He told her all about it while the dusk slowly deepened. Chitta should have a salary for remaining in a cottage that he would give her in Alava and never leaving it. He would give his friends that dinner now—Houdon and Devignes, Varachon and Garnier—a dinner of celebration at which the host would be present and to which even Gaston François Louis Pasbeaucoup and the elephantine Madame would sit down. There would be bushels of strawberries. Seraphin would be pensioned for life, so that he might paint only the pictures that his heart demanded, and Fourget—yes, Cartaret would embrace dear old Fourget like a true Gaul. In the Luxembourg Gardens the statues of the old gods smiled and held their peace.
“You—you can study too,” said Cartaret. “You can have the best art-masters in the world, and you shall have them.”
But Vitoria shook her head.
“There,” she said, “is another confession and the last. I was the more ready to leave Paris when I ran away from you, because I was disheartened: the master had told me that I could never learn, and so I was afraid to face you.”
“Then I’ll never paint again,” vowed Cartaret. “Pictures? I was successful only when I painted pictures of you, and why should I paint them when I have you?”