The young people talked gaily together while sipping champagne, and blessed the coachman for taking so long to bring another carriage. Marsac and Delphine seemed to find it impossible to get away from the question of marriage, albeit they tried to outdo each other in railing at it. Delphine declared that a woman should keep her eyes open at the moment of marrying even the best of men, and Marsac recommended that she should keep her eyes half shut ever afterward. Claire charmed Fontaine by saying sweetly, after this,—

“I should scorn to watch the man I married. I should want to have every confidence in him.”

“Then, Mademoiselle, you would need to kill him immediately after the ceremony,” counselled Marsac.

Then the conversation turned on Uncle Maurice. Marsac and Fontaine had a number of ready-made anecdotes respecting the old man and his honourable career in New York, which they told with gravity and effect. Marsac declared that he felt like going in mourning himself, so grateful was he for what Uncle Maurice had done for Fontaine; while Fontaine, with perfect truth, said that he thought more of his Uncle Maurice than of any relative he had in the world. Every moment passed in one another’s society drew these four young hearts closer together,—Fontaine and Claire willingly, and Marsac and Delphine loudly protesting and abusing the emotions which, just born in their hearts, yet grew like Jonah’s gourd.

At last, however, this accidental half-hour—which brought so much happiness to Fontaine and Claire, and turned the world topsy-turvy for Marsac and Delphine—came to an end. The carriage was reported, the Duval party rose to go, after the two young men had reiterated their promise to dine on the Saturday at Passy, old Duval saying,—

“Of course, it is most kind of you to come to us, with all your engagements with marshals and dukes and princes; but,” with a significant look at Marsac, “some of those titled people you want to keep at long range.”

“Especially the Prince de Landais and the Baroness Schmid,” boldly responded Marsac.

The door was open, and the Duvals were going out after saying good-bye for the tenth time, when the two young men saw coming up the stairs the compact figure and shrewd face of Maurepas, their editor-in-chief. He met old Duval face to face on the landing.

“Delighted to see you, Monsieur Duval,” cried Maurepas. “I was going to see you to-morrow; but if you will pardon a busy man for introducing business, just let me ask you to give me the refusal of that villa you have at Melun until I can get to see you.”

“Sorry to disappoint you, but it is the day after the ball. I have just in effect sold it to Monsieur Fontaine,” replied Monsieur Duval, going on downstairs.

Maurepas entered the room with the air of a chagrined man, and throwing down his hat, said crossly,—

“So, Fontaine, that newspaper story is true, and you have come into a great fortune?”

“Not so very great,” answered Fontaine, modestly,—“only a couple of million francs.”

“Oh, Lord!” sniffed Maurepas, “how our ideas have expanded! Well, I am glad your old uncle cut up so handsomely.”

“Monsieur Maurepas,” said Marsac, severely, “I beg you will at least respect Fontaine’s mourning attire. It is exceedingly painful to us to have Monsieur Maurice Fontaine’s death alluded to in that flippant and heartless manner.”

Monsieur Maurepas sniffed louder than ever, but did not pursue the objectionable subject. “Well,” he said, “I suppose Fontaine will give up journalism now?”

“I don’t know,” responded Fontaine, dubiously; “I always liked my profession.”

“In that case,” replied Maurepas, “I will make you an offer. I know what you can do.”

Fontaine could not forbear remarking, “You used to say I couldn’t do anything!”

“My dear fellow,” answered Maurepas, coolly, “that was before you were talked about. Now, as the most talked-about young man in Paris, your name is worth something to a newspaper, even if your ideas are not. I will make you this proposition. If you will give ‘La Lune’ three signed articles a week, of a thousand words each, I will give you five hundred francs a week. I make but one stipulation,—your name must be signed to them, but Marsac must write them.”

Fontaine hesitated for a moment, but Marsac answered for him: “Done!”

“And another thing. There is to be a great journalists’ dinner given on the 17th, and I want you, when called upon, to make a speech in the name of the younger members of the staff of ‘La Lune.’”

“I couldn’t! I wouldn’t! I never made a speech in my life.”

“But you could. What’s the matter with Marsac composing the speech, and your delivering it?”

“None in the world,” answered Marsac, laughing. “So you can put him down for the 17th.”

“And now about the Melun villa,” continued Maurepas, after making a memorandum in his note-book. “I dare not go home to my wife without the promise of that place. I told her I would see Monsieur Duval to-day, but I forgot it. I don’t know what you paid for it, but I will give you a hundred thousand francs for it.”

The prospect of making a clear ten thousand francs delighted Fontaine so that he could not speak for a moment,—when, catching Marsac’s eye fixed upon him, he understood the signal, and gave an evasive answer, which Maurepas pooh-poohed. Marsac then interfered.

“The fact is,” he said, with his most candid manner, “I am against you there, Monsieur Maurepas. I want Fontaine to keep the villa. He wants to buy a great hotel on the Avenue de l’Alma for seven hundred and fifty thousand francs. I tell him it is much too expensive for him, and I don’t think his Uncle Maurice would have approved of it.”

Fontaine had never heard of the Avenue de l’Alma house, but he assented promptly. Maurepas, however, being intensely anxious for the villa, cut short the discussion about the Avenue de l’Alma house by offering one hundred and ten thousand francs for the villa. Fontaine, dying to accept, glanced at Marsac, who began to whistle softly. Maurepas, growing more eager, jumped his bid immediately to one hundred and twenty thousand francs. Fontaine thought Marsac crazy, when he rose, buttoned his coat, and said,—

“Pray excuse us, Monsieur Maurepas. We have an engagement at a little supper to-night at the Archbishop’s,—quite an informal little affair.”

“A hundred and thirty thousand francs!” cried Maurepas. “I am a great fool; but—”

Marsac handed Fontaine’s crape-covered hat to him.

“A hundred and forty thousand for the villa, and may the devil take it!” said Maurepas, in desperation.

“No!” joyfully shouted Fontaine, who saw acquiescence in Marsac’s eye. “I’ll take it!”

“Make one condition, my dear fellow,” said Marsac, earnestly, to Fontaine. “If you will be such a fool as to sell the villa, make Monsieur Maurepas promise you not to mention the price to Monsieur Duval. The old gentleman thought he was selling it to you for a mere song, and he will never forgive you if he finds out you re-sold it immediately at so small an advance.”

“Yes, yes,” said Fontaine; and Maurepas, who was making out a little memorandum of the transaction, added readily,—

“Yes, yes. I will not mention it.”

“Stop,” cried Marsac. “It would be as well to tell Monsieur Duval that Fontaine got a large advance on it. That will reconcile old Duval to his selling it.”

“I’ll tell the old fellow anything you like. Only sign this little memorandum, Fontaine, and you can pass the papers over directly to me as soon as you get them. And if you will take a cheque to bind the bargain—”

Fontaine could scarcely refrain from embracing the editor on the spot, but obeying a telegraphic signal from Marsac, he merely said, “If it is any inconvenience to you—”

“It is not the slightest; and it will please my wife to know it is settled,” answered Maurepas, taking out a cheque-book and rapidly writing a cheque for twenty thousand francs.

In ten minutes the informal but binding agreement was made and signed, and Maurepas took his departure.

Fontaine and Marsac, left alone, sat looking intently at each other, simply stunned by their good fortune. Marsac, finding words unable to express his rapture, turned a double handspring over the sofa, when Fontaine, rushing up to him, hugged and kissed him violently. After this, they stood grasping each other for five minutes in silent rapture, when Marsac’s countenance, losing its blissful expression, became suddenly grave.

“Fontaine, this is glorious; but tell me one thing. What is that singular sensation which I felt the instant my eyes rested on Delphine? I feel it now. It is most peculiar and penetrating, and, although agitating, not unpleasant.”

“Love, you idiot!”

“You alarm me,” said Marsac, anxiously. “Tell me it is something less dangerous, — locomotor ataxia or paresis: I have been told the symptoms are somewhat alike.”

“I tell you that you are in love with Delphine, just as I am in love with my sweet Claire; and you need not fight and struggle against it. Love is lord of all. No man has lived until he has loved.”

“But is there no way out of love? A course of Plato and a low diet—”

“Not a particle of good!”

Marsac relapsed into gloom, until Fontaine, whacking him on the back, cried exultingly,—

“Think, Marsac, twenty thousand francs in hand; thirty thousand more coming; forty thousand francs profit each from the brewery shares we can now buy; a thousand francs for a picture; a play placed; clothes enough for two years,—hurrah for Uncle Maurice!”

“Hurrah! hurrah! hurrah! for Uncle Maurice!” shouted Marsac, capering wildly about.

Fontaine ran and opened the closet door to let out the two ballet-girls, who had gone to sleep. He pulled them out, and began dancing gaily with them; while Marsac, finding Madame Schmid at the keyhole listening, dragged her in out of the corridor, and seizing her round the waist, began to waltz furiously, both of them hurrahing for Uncle Maurice at the top of their lungs, and singing doggerel verses made up as they danced, and all ending with a joyous refrain of,—

“Houp-là! for Uncle Maurice!”