"He will be my son-in-law." Paul, on the other hand, said to himself,
as he looked at Natalie, "She will be my wife."

The wealth of the Evangelistas, proverbial in Bordeaux, had remained
in Paul's mind as a memory of his childhood. Thus the pecuniary
conditions were known to him from the start, without necessitating
those discussions and inquiries which are as repugnant to a timid mind
as to a proud one. When some persons attempting to say to Paul a few
flattering phrases as to Natalie's manner, language, and beauty,
ending by remarks, cruelly calculated to deter him, on the lavish
extravagance of the Evangelistas, the Pink of Fashion replied with a
disdain that was well-deserved by such provincial pettiness. This
method of receiving such speeches soon silenced them; for he now set
the tone to the ideas and language as well as to the manners of those
about him. He had imported from his travels a certain development of
the Britannic personality with its icy barriers, also a tone of
Byronic pessimism as to life, together with English plate,
boot-polish, ponies, yellow gloves, cigars, and the habit of galloping.

It thus happened that Paul escaped the discouragements hitherto
presented to marriageable men by dowagers and young girls. Madame
Evangelista began by asking him to formal dinners on various
occasions. The Pink of Fashion would not, of course, miss festivities
to which none but the most distinguished young men of the town were
bidden. In spite of the coldness that Paul assumed, which deceived
neither mother nor daughter, he was drawn, step by step, into the path
of marriage. Sometimes as he passed in his tilbury, or rode by on his
fine English horse, he heard the young men of his acquaintance say to
one another:--