"I am very simple," said Pierre Lamont, laughing inwardly. He knew that she wanted to propitiate him; "and beauty can lead me by a silken thread."
"Is that another of your compliments? I declare, you speak as if you were a young man."
She did, indeed, desire to win Pierre Lamont entirely to her, and she would have endured much to make him her friend instead of her enemy. Christian Almer had told her that the old lawyer had slept in the next room to his, and she had set herself the task of sounding the old fellow to ascertain whether his suspicions were aroused, and whether she had anything to fear from him. She could not help saying to herself what a fool Mother Denise--who looked after the household arrangements--was to put him so close to Christian.
"I do believe," thought Adelaide, "that she did it to spite me."
Her mind, however, was quite at ease after chatting with the old lawyer.
"I am so glad we are friends," she said to him; "it is altogether so much nicer."
Pierre Lamont looked reproachfully at her, and asked how she could ever have supposed he was anything but her most devoted admirer.
"Lawyers are so fond of mischief," she replied, "that if it does not come to them ready-made they manufacture it for themselves."
"I am no longer a lawyer," he said; "if I were twenty years younger I should call myself a lover."
"If you were twenty years younger," she rejoined gaily, "I should not sit and listen to your nonsense."