“Well, I will bet that the queen would make that man a minister who would place the necklace on her toilet within a week.”
“Oh, countess!”
“I say what I think. Would you rather I kept silent?”
“Certainly not.”
“However, it does not concern you, after all. It is absurd to suppose that you would throw away a million and a half on a royal caprice; that would be paying too dearly for the portfolio, which you ought to have for nothing, so think no more of what I have said.”
The cardinal continued silent and thoughtful.
“Ah, you despise me now!” continued she; “you think I judge the queen by myself. So I do; I thought she wanted these diamonds because she sighed as she looked at them, and because in her place I should have coveted them.”
“You are an adorable woman, countess! You have, by a wonderful combination, softness of mind and strength of heart; sometimes you are so little of a woman that I am frightened; at others, so charmingly so, that I bless Heaven and you for it. And now we will talk of business no more.”
“So be it,” thought Jeanne; “but I believe the bait has taken, nevertheless.”
Indeed, although the cardinal said, “Speak of it no more,” in a few minutes he asked, “Does not Bœhmer live somewhere on the Quai de la Ferraille, near the Pont Neuf?”