But it made a good deal of difference across the Channel. Gordon began to repent. Ernest's family was high, his Austrian connexions very aristocratic: there would be something after all in belonging to a man so well known. (Be successful, ami lecteur, and all your relatives will love you.) Besides, he had found out that it is no use to put your faith in princes, or clergymen. Eusebius had treated him very badly when he found he could not get Nina and her money, and spoke against the poor banker everywhere, calling him, with tender pastoral regret, a "worldly Egyptian," a "Dives," a "whitened sepulchre," and all the rest of it.
Probably, too, stoic though he was, he missed the chevelure dorée; at any rate, he wrote to her stiffly, but kindly, and settled two thousand a year upon her. Vaughan was very willing she should be friends with her father, but nothing would make him draw a sou of the money. So Nina--the only sly thing she ever did in her life--after a while contrived to buy back the Surrey estate, and gave it to him, with no end of prayers and caresses, on the Jour de l'An.
"And you do not regret, my darling," smiled Ernest, after wishing her the new year's wishes, "having forgiven me for once drinking too much Sillery, and all the other naughty things of my vie de garçon?"
"Regret!" interrupted Nina, vehemently--"regret that I have won your love, live your life, share your cares and joys, regret that my existence is one long day of sunshine? Oh, why ask! you know I can never repay you for the happiness of my life."
"Rather can I never repay you," said Vaughan, looking down into her eyes, "for the faith that made you brave calumny and opposition, and cling to my side despite all. I was heart-sick of the world, and you called me back to life. I was weary of the fools who misjudged me, and I let them think me what they might."
"Ah, how happy you make me!" cried Nina. "I should have been little worthy of your love if I had suffered slander to warp me against you, or if any revelations you cared enough for me to make of your past life, had parted us:
Love is not love That alters where it alteration finds, Or bends with the remover to remove.
There, monsieur!" she said, throwing her arms round him with a laugh, while happy tears stood in her eyes--"there is a grand quotation for you. Mind and take care, Ernest, that you never realise the Ruskinstone predictions, and make me repent having caught and caged such a terrible thing as a hunted PARIS LION!"