“Go and keep him below for a moment,” said Marsac; and with wonderful quickness he hustled the two girls, nothing loath, into the closet, where they willingly shut the door, tittering at their own predicament. It was something else, though, to get rid of Madame Schmid. Marsac had almost to drag her to the corridor door, she fighting like a tiger, and Marsac assuring her that it would forever destroy them should a young and handsome woman like her be found in their apartment. Barely was she shoved out, and scarcely had Marsac time to seat himself in a meditative attitude with a book, when Fontaine, with old Duval, entered; and while greeting him, Marsac could hear Madame Schmid prancing up and down the corridor in her wrath. Monsieur Duval, broad, rubicund, benevolent, conceited, and with the true auriferous air which belongs to the vulgar rich, congratulated Fontaine on his accession of fortune. Fontaine received this modestly, while Marsac eulogised Uncle Maurice and pointed out the goodness indicated in every feature of the portrait hanging on the wall. “Yes, yes,” said Monsieur Duval, “you have had a great stroke of luck, young man; and I hope you will be worthy of it.” To which Fontaine replied that he hoped to prove himself entirely worthy of his Uncle Maurice’s goodness. “And now,” cried Monsieur Duval, swelling out his waistcoat, “I must tell you that I have other objects in calling to see you to-night, besides congratulating you on your good fortune. One is, to sell you a piece of property at Melun; and the other is to ask you both to dine with me at my Passy villa very soon. I wish you to meet my niece Delphine, who has lately come to live with my daughter and me. Would to-morrow suit?” “Perfectly,” cried Fontaine, eagerly, but was checked by Marsac with a look. “I think you have the poorest memory I ever saw,” said Marsac, severely, to Fontaine. “Have you forgotten that to-morrow we dine with the Prince, and next day with the Marshal, the day after with the Archbishop?” Duval, a little staggered by these magnificent names, remarked, “I thought you told me to-day that Monsieur Fontaine was not going into society on account of his mourning?” “So he is not,” coolly responded Marsac. “These are merely little family affairs with people we have always known.” This did not make old Duval any the less anxious to have them, and he named a day the next week, which Marsac and Fontaine, after an elaborate consultation of their notebooks, finally found they could accept. [Illustration] “And now about the villa,” said the old brewer, standing with his feet wide apart and his thumbs in his waistcoat pockets. “It’s a very pretty place at Melun; my daughter is very fond of it; and if you are looking for a country place, Monsieur Fontaine, you could not do better than take it, at ninety thousand francs.”