"Is that your last word, M. Duplessis?"
"Monsieur Louvier, it is."
"Bon jour!"
And Louvier strode to the door; here he paused: "Take a day to consider."
"Not a moment."
"Your servant, Monsieur,—your very humble servant." Louvier vanished.
Duplessis leaned his large thoughtful forehead on his thin nervous hand.
"This loan will pinch me," he muttered. "I must be very wary now with
such a foe. Well, why should I care to be rich? Valerie's dot,
Valerie's happiness, are secured."
CHAPTER X.
Madame Savarin wrote a very kind and very apologetic letter to Isaura, but no answer was returned to it. Madame Savarin did not venture to communicate to her husband the substance of a conversation which had ended so painfully. He had, in theory, a delicacy of tact, which, if he did not always exhibit it in practice, made him a very severe critic of its deficiency in others. Therefore, unconscious of the offence given, he made a point of calling at Isaura's apartments, and leaving word with her servant that "he was sure she would be pleased to hear M. Rameau was somewhat better, though still in danger."
It was not till the third day after her interview with Madame Savarin that Isaura left her own room,—she did so to receive Mrs. Morley.