"_Ah, ah, vous voila donc! ce n'etoit pas bienfait, Monsieur_."
"_Oui_," said I, "_tres nettement fait, et voila encore_," slipping a
Napoleon into his hand.
"_Ca s'arrange tres-joliment, Monsieur_," said the man, grinning from
ear to ear, and bowing to the ground.
"_C'est Madame, que vous voulez donc_?"
"_Oui_," said I.
He led, I followed; he opened the door of a breakfast
parlour--"_tenez, Madame, voici le Monsieur que m'a renverse hier au
soi_."
Eugenia was seated on a sofa, with her boy by her side, the loveliest
little fellow I had ever beheld. His face was one often described,
but rarely seen; it was shaded with dark curling ringlets, his mouth,
eyes, and complexion had much of his mother, and, vanity whispered me,
much more of myself. I took a seat on the sofa, and with the boy on my
knee, and Eugenia by my side, held her hand, while she narrated the
events of her life since the time of our separation.
"A few days," said she, "after your departure for the Flushing
expedition, I read in the public prints, that 'if the nearest relation
of my mother would call at ----, in London, they would hear of
something to their advantage.' I wrote to the agent, from whom I
learned, after proving my identity, that the two sisters of my mother,
who, you may remember, had like sums left them by the will of their
relative, had continued to live in a state of single blessedness;
that, about four years previous, one of them had died, leaving every
thing to the other, and that the other had died only two months
before, bequeathing all her property to my mother, or her next heir;
or, in default of that, to some distant relation.
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