years of age, with an immense fortune and the prettiest little girl in
the world, a child of eleven, who promised to be, and did actually
become, a most accomplished young woman. Clever as Madame Evangelista
was, the Restoration altered her position; the royalist party cleared
its ranks and several of the old families left Bordeaux. Though the
head and hand of her husband were lacking in the direction of her
affairs, for which she had hitherto shown the indifference of a Creole
and the inaptitude of a lackadaisical woman, she was determined to
make no change in her manner of living. At the period when Paul
resolved to return to his native town, Mademoiselle Natalie
Evangelista was a remarkably beautiful young girl, and, apparently,
the richest match in Bordeaux, where the steady diminution of her
mother's capital was unknown. In order to prolong her reign, Madame
Evangelista had squandered enormous sums. Brilliant fetes and the
continuation of an almost regal style of living kept the public in its
past belief as to the wealth of the Spanish family.

Natalie was now in her nineteenth year, but no proposal of marriage
had as yet reached her mother's ear. Accustomed to gratify her
fancies, Mademoiselle Evangelista wore cashmeres and jewels, and lived
in a style of luxury which alarmed all speculative suitors in a region
and at a period when sons were as calculating as their parents. The
fatal remark, "None but a prince can afford to marry Mademoiselle
Evangelista," circulated among the salons and the cliques. Mothers of
families, dowagers who had granddaughters to establish, young girls
jealous of Natalie, whose elegance and tyrannical beauty annoyed them,
took pains to envenom this opinion with treacherous remarks. When they
heard a possible suitor say with ecstatic admiration, as Natalie
entered a ball-room, "Heavens, how beautiful she is!" "Yes," the
mammas would answer, "but expensive." If some new-comer thought