316 THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. have you got besides your Spanish lace and your Dresden tea-cups ] " " I have got a comfortable little fortune about forty thousand francs a year. With the talent that I have for arranging, we can live beautifully on such an income." " Beautifully, no. Sufficiently, yes. Even that depends on where you live." "Well, in Paris. I would undertake it in Paris." Madame Merle's mouth rose to the left. " It wouldn't be splendid ; you would have to make use of the tea-cups, and they would get brojien." "We don't want to be splendid. If Miss Osmond should have everything pretty, it would be enough. When one is as pretty as she, one can afford to be simple. She ought never to wear anything but muslin," said Rosier, reflectively. " She would be much obliged to you for that theory." " It's the correct one, I assure you ; and I am sure she would enter into it. She understands all that ; that's why I love her." " She is a very good little girl, and extremely graceful. But her father, to the best of my belief, can give her nothing." Rosier hesitated a moment. "I don't in the least desire that he should. But I may remark, all the same, that he lives like a rich man." "The money is his wife's ; she brought him a fortune." " Mrs. Osmond, then, is very fond of her step-daughter ; she may do something." "For a love-sick swain you have your eyes about you!" Madame Merle exclaimed, with a laugh. "I esteem a dot very much. I can do without it, but I esteem it." "Mrs. Osmond," Madame Merle went on, "will probably prefer to keep her money for her own children." " Her own children 1 ? Surely she has none." " She may have' yet. She had a poor little boy, who died two years ago, six months after his birth. Others, therefore, may come." " I hope they will, if it will make her happy. She is a splendid woman." Madame Merle was silent a moment. " Ah, about her there is much to be said. Splendid as you iike ! We have not exactly made out that you are a parti. The absence of vices is hardly a source of income." "Excuse me, I think it may be," said Rosier, with his per- suasive smile.
