Marie Berard conducts the friendless child to its new home, in the morning hours. The luggage and belongings are despatched. All is over. Safe at last.
Free to move, as soon as the maid returns, Hortense at once leaves her modest quarters. The bills are all paid. Their belongings are packed as for departure. To the Hotel Meurice, by a roundabout route, mistress and maid repair. Hortense Duval is no more. A new social birth.
Madame de Santos, in superb apartments, proceeds to arrange her entree into future social greatness. A modern miracle.
No one has seen the children together in Paris. On the steamer not a suspicion was raised. Natalie de Santos breathes freely. A few days of preparation makes Madame "au fait" in the newest fashions. Her notes, cartes de visite, dazzling "batterie de toilette," and every belonging bear crest, monogram, and initial of the new-born Senora Natalie.
Securely lodged in an aristocratic apartment, Madame de Santos receives her bankers, and the members of the Southern circle, to whom the Judge has given her the freemasonry of his influence. Madame de Santos is now a social fact, soon to find her old life a waning memory. The glittering splendors of the court gaieties are her everyday enjoyments.
Keenly watching all Californians, protected by her former retirement, her foreign appearance and glamour of wealth impose on all. She soon almost forgets herself and that dark past before the days of the El Dorado. She is at last secure within wealth's impregnable ramparts, and defies adverse fate.
An apartment on the Champs Elysees is judiciously chosen by her bankers. Marie Berard, with her useful allies, aids in the selection of the exquisite adornment. Her own treasures aid in the "ensemble."
The servants, the equipage of perfect appointment, all her surroundings bespeak the innate refinement of the woman who has for long years pleased even the exacting Hardin.
Natalie de Santos has not neglected to properly report by telegraph and mail to the guardian of the person and future millions of Col. Valois' only child.
Her attitude toward society is quiet, dignified, without haste or ostentation. A beautiful woman, talented, free, rich, and "a la mode," can easily reach the social pleasures of that gaudy set who now throng the Tuileries.