Page:The Portrait of a Lady (London, Macmillan & Co., 1881) Volume 2.djvu/214

 Merle went on. "Leave it to me a little; I think I can help you."

"I said you were the person to come to!" cried the young man, with an ingenuous radiance in his face.

"You were very clever," Madame Merle returned, more drily. "When I say I can help you, I mean once assuming that your cause is good. Let us think a little whether it is."

"I'm a dear little fellow," said Eosier, earnestly. "I won't say I have no faults, but I will say I have no vices."

"All that is negative. What is the positive side? What 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 broken."

"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.