"And for why, my angel precious?" anxiously asked the man.
"Why, do you know," replied Mrs. Winslow with earnestness, "I sometimes really believe I am being watched!"
"No, that was impossible!" said Le Compte, with a start.
"And sometimes," she continued, paying no attention to him, "it seems as though I could not stand this terrible keeping up appearances any longer."
"You should have pleasure in the appearance," responded Le Compte insinuatingly, "it breaks him down already. He is now like one weak infant."
"That's so, that's so," she answered quickly, in a tone of vengeful joyousness. "I'll bring the old devil to my feet yet. I'll crush him out and ruin his fortune, if it takes me all my life. I'll get the biggest part of it, too; and then, Le Compte, we'll get out of this cursed country and enjoy ourselves the rest of our lives."
"Yes, in Paris, the magnificent, the beautiful, the sublime! Then we will live in one heaven of love. Oh, beautiful, beautiful!" cried the little Frenchman excitedly.
"There, Le Compte," said his companion, suddenly becoming practical again, "don't make a fool of yourself! Take this bill and go down and get a bottle of wine; and mind you, don't keep the change either."
As the train returned at two, and I had but little time to reach it, as soon as Le Compte had come back with the wine and they had become sufficiently noisy to admit of it, I quietly left my room, paid my bill, went to the train, avoiding Fox entirely, and, with him, was soon again in Rochester, leaving the roystering couple at the little hotel at Charlotte building their vain dreams and air-castles about crushing out Lyon—which would have been an easy matter if left to himself—their beautiful, magnificent, and sublime Paris, and their "one heaven of love" within it.