“But, Marsac, he _is_ alive! That is the maddening part. Suppose the real Uncle Maurice should come walking in here some fine day,--what would you say?” “I should say, ‘Good morning, Monsieur Fontaine; delighted to see you. Have a cigar? We heard that you were dead.’ And the old gentleman would be so pleased at finding himself alive, that he would forgive us anything.” Among the first persons to hear the story was Madame Fleury; and the hardest task before Marsac was when he was stopped by her in the entresol, one morning, with an inquiry whether the story was true or not about Fontaine’s uncle’s death. “Alas! it is only too true,” replied Marsac, sorrowfully. “I think Monsieur Auguste should have informed me of it,” said Madame Fleury, “considering our relations.” “Ah, Madame, you, a widow, can have no idea of the bashfulness of a young man like Fontaine, in his first love affair. The relations of men and women are so changed now. I am barely thirty, but I remember when it was the lady who was diffident. But the last diffident woman, I understand, has been secured for the Jardin des Plantes.” Madame Fleury heard this with a smile playing round her handsome mouth. “I hardly think that the engagement between Monsieur Auguste Fontaine and me can be called a love affair. It was a business arrangement, pure and simple. However, if this story about his Uncle Maurice and his fortune is true, then I shall look forward with more satisfaction than ever to the 15th of May. But why does not Monsieur Fontaine call to see me occasionally?” “Bashfulness, Madame Fleury,--pure bashfulness. I tell you, men and women have changed places. I predict that in a few years a young man will no more think of calling on his _fiancée_ than a few years back his _fiancée_ would have called on him.” Madame Fleury heard this, uttered in Marsac’s airiest manner, with the same inscrutable smile. When Marsac left her presence, after an hour’s laboured explanations, he had not the slightest certainty whether she believed in Uncle Maurice or not. He rather thought she did not, from her last remark,--which was that if Monsieur Fontaine really had inherited two million francs, she would be glad to have the two hundred he owed her.