Therese dropped her fork and stared at the speaker.
"Sleep here? you must be mad. Bring people home to sleep—I expect you want to give up your own bed to them. You must be off your head. Is it keeping a lodging-house you are about? If this is so, don't look to me! get a cook and servants. It is bad enough to be yours, without waiting on Tom, Dick and Harry."
"Therese, listen to me," replied Jacques, with his grave, even voice; "it is for one night only. This young man has never set foot in Paris, and comes under my safe-conduct. I am not going to have him go to an inn, though he has to have my own bed, look you."
Therese understood that struggle was out of the question for the present and she changed her tactics by fighting for Gilbert, but as an ally who would stab him in the back at the first chance.
"I daresay you know all about him, or you would not have brought him home, and he ought to stay here. I will shake up some kind of a bed in your study among the papers."
"No, no, a study is not fit for a sleeping-room; a light might set fire to the writings."
"Which would be no loss," sneered Therese.
"There is the garret; the room with a fine outlook over such gardens as are scarce in Paris. Have no anxiety, Therese; the young man will not be a burden; he will earn his own living. Take a candle and follow me."
Therese sighed, but she was mastered. Gilbert gravely rose and followed his benefactor. On the landing Gilbert saw drinking water in a tank.
"Is water dear in town?" he inquired.