Eugénie, almost as much a woman as a girl, had not foreseen a refusal, but her cousin was silent.
“Why, are you going to refuse me?” asked Eugénie. The silence was so deep that the beating of her heart was audible. Her pride was wounded by her cousin’s hesitation, but the thought of his dire need came vividly before her, and she fell on her knees.
“I will not rise,” she said, “until you have taken that money. Oh! cousin, say something, for pity’s sake! … so that I may know that you respect me, that you are generous, that …”
This cry, wrung from her by a noble despair, brought tears to Charles’ eyes; he would not let her kneel, she felt his hot tears on her hands, and sprang to her purse, which she emptied out upon the table.
“Well, then, it is ‘Yes,’ is it not?” she said, crying for joy. “Do not scruple to take it, cousin; you will be quite rich. That gold will bring you luck, you know. Some day you shall pay it back to me, or, if you like, we will be partners; I will submit to any conditions that you may impose. But you ought not to make so much of this gift.”
Charles found words at last.
“Yes, Eugénie, I should have a little soul indeed if I would not take it. But nothing for nothing, confidence for confidence.”
“What do you mean?” she asked, startled.
“Listen, dear cousin, I have there—”
He interrupted himself for a moment to show her a square box in a leather case, which stood on the chest of drawers.
“There is something there that is dearer to me than life. That box was a present from my mother. Since this morning I have thought that if she could rise from her tomb she herself would sell the gold that in her tenderness she lavished on this dressing-case, but I cannot do it—it would seem like sacrilege.”
Eugénie grasped her cousin’s hand tightly in hers at these last words.
“No,” he went on after a brief pause, during which they looked at each other with tearful eyes, “I do not want to pull it to pieces, nor to risk taking it with me on my wanderings. I will leave it in your keeping, dear Eugénie. Never did one friend confide a more sacred trust to another; but you shall judge for yourself.”
He drew the box from its leather case, opened it, and displayed before his cousin’s astonished eyes a dressing-case resplendent with gold—the curious skill of the craftsman had only added to the value of the metal.
“All that you are admiring is nothing,” he said, pressing the spring of a secret drawer. “There is something which is worth more than all the world to me,” he added sadly.
He took out two portraits, two of Mme. de Mirbel’s masterpieces, handsomely set in pearls.
“How lovely she is! Is not this the lady to whom you were writing?”
“No,” he said, with a little smile; “that is my mother, and this is my father—your aunt and uncle. Eugénie, I could beg and pray of you on my knees to keep this treasure safe for me. If I should die, and lose your little fortune, the gold will make good your loss; and to you alone can I leave those two portraits, for you alone are worthy to take charge of them, but do not let them pass into other hands, rather destroy them …”
Eugénie was silent.
“Well, ‘it is Yes, is it not?’ ” he said, and there was a winning charm in his manner.
As the last words were spoken, she gave him for the first time such a glance as a loving woman can, a bright glance that reveals a depth of feeling within her. He took her hand and kissed it.
“Angel of purity! what is money henceforward between us two? It is nothing, is it not? but the feeling, which alone gave it worth, will be everything.”
“You are like your mother. Was her voice as musical as yours, I wonder?”
“Oh! far more sweet …”
“Yes, for you,” she said, lowering her eyelids. “Come, Charles, you must go to bed; I wish it. You are very tired. Good night.”
Her cousin had caught her hand in both of his; she drew it gently away, and went down to her room, her cousin lighting the way. In the doorway of her room they both paused.
“Oh! why am I a ruined man?” he said.
“Pshaw! my father is rich, I believe,” she returned.
“My poor child,” said Charles, as he set one foot in her room, and propped himself against the wall by the doorway, “if your father had been rich, he would not have let my father die, and you would not be lodged in such a poor place as this; he would live altogether in quite a different style.”
“But he has Froidfond.”
“And what may Froidfond be worth?”
“I do not know; but there is Noyers too.”
“Some miserable farmhouse!”
“He has vineyards and meadows—”
“They are not worth talking about,” said Charles scornfully. “If your father had even twenty-four thousand livres a year, do you suppose that you would sleep in a bare, cold room like this?” he added, as he made a step forward with his left foot. “That is where my treasures will be,” he went on, nodding towards the old chest, a device by which he tried to conceal his thoughts from her.
“Go,” she said, “and try to sleep,” and she barred his entrance into an untidy room. Charles drew back; and the cousins bade each other a smiling good night.
They fell asleep, to dream the same dream; and from that time forward Charles found that there were still roses to be gathered in the world in spite of his mourning. The next morning Mme. Grandet saw her daughter walking with Charles before
