“There has been no such misunderstanding.”
“Do you doubt whether the sentiments you expressed
in regard to her when we met last year, are returned?”
“I have no right to conjecture her sentiments.
You mistake altogether.”
“I do not believe that I am dunce enough to
mistake your feelings towards Mademoiselle—they
may be read in your face at this moment. Of course
I do not presume to hazard a conjecture as to those
of Mademoiselle towards yourself. But when I
met her not long since at the house of Duplessis,
with whose daughter she is intimate, I chanced to speak
to her of you; and if I may judge, by looks and manner,
I chose no displeasing theme. You turn away—I
offend you?”
“Offend!—no, indeed; but on this
subject I am not prepared to converse. I came
to Paris on matters of business much complicated and
which ought to absorb my attention. I cannot
longer trespass on your evening. The day after
to-morrow, then, I will be with you at one o’clock.”
“Yes, I hope then to have the letters you wish
to consult; and, meanwhile, we meet to-morrow at the
Hotel Duplessis.”
Graham had scarcely quitted Alain, and the young Marquis
was about to saunter forth to his club, when Duplessis
was announced.
These two men had naturally seen much of each other
since Duplessis had returned from Bretagne and delivered
Alain from the gripe of Louvier. Scarcely a day
had passed but what Alain had been summoned to enter
into the financier’s plans for the aggrandisement
of the Rochebriant estates, and delicately made to
feel that he had become a partner in speculations,
which, thanks to the capital and the abilities Duplessis
brought to bear, seemed likely to result in the ultimate
freedom of his property from all burdens, and the
restoration of his inheritance to a splendour correspondent
with the dignity of his rank.
On the plea that his mornings were chiefly devoted
to professional business, Duplessis arranged that
these consultations should take place in the evenings.
From those consultations Valerie was not banished;
Duplessis took her into the council as a matter of
course. “Valerie,” said the financier
to Alain, “though so young, has a very clear
head for business, and she is so interested in all
that interests myself, that even where I do not take
her opinion, I at least feel my own made livelier
and brighter by her sympathy.”
So the girl was in the habit of taking her work or
her book into the cabinet de travail, and never
obtruding a suggestion unasked, still, when appealed
to, speaking with a modest good sense which justified
her father’s confidence and praise; and a
propos of her book, she had taken Chateaubriand
into peculiar favour. Alain had respectfully
presented to her beautifully bound copies of Atala
and Ls Genie du Christianisme; it is astonishing,
indeed, how he had already contrived to regulate her
tastes in literature. The charms of those quiet
family evenings had stolen into the young Breton’s
heart.
