There was no simulation in the dismay, the horror with which Bertha's proposal was greeted by the countess. How was she to breathe in a land where hereditary claims to rank were unknown?--where distinctions of _brains_ not _blood_ were alone recognized?--where a man might rise to the highest position, as ruler of the realm, though his father chanced to be a mechanic, and his grandfather's existence was untraceable? For a time, Bertha's entreaties and the count's representations were equally impotent; the countess was inexorable. But her son was not to be baffled; he found an avenue through which her heart could be reached, and her resolution undermined. It lay in the suggestion that Bertha's strong inclination to visit America sprang from a desire again to behold Maurice, and that the result of their meeting, after so long a separation, might be in the highest degree felicitous. Bertha, he urged, during the absence of Maurice, had probably learned that he was dearer to her than she imagined; and, if Maurice had reason to believe that she crossed the ocean for the sake of rejoining him, could he remain insensible to such a proof of devotion? The countess bowed her haughty head to a sacrifice which vitally compromised her dignity.
One of the objects of the count's visit to America was to learn something further of the railroad company with which he was connected. For a time its operations had been suspended, owing to a financial crisis,--a sort of periodical American epidemic that, like cholera, sweeps over the land at intervals, making frightful ravage for a season, and departing as mysteriously as it came. The elastic nation, never long prostrate, had risen out of temporary difficulties and depression with a sudden bound, and prosperity walked in the very footprints of the late destroyer.
Mr. Hilson had lately announced to Count Tristan that the railway association was again in full activity, and that the mooted question of the direction which the road ought to take would, ere long, be decided. He added that, according to his judgment, the left road was indubitably the more desirable. Should that road be chosen, it would pass through the property owned by the Viscount de Gramont. We have already alluded to the immense difference in the value of the estate which the advent of the railroad would insure.