“Convenience is a very doubtful debtor. Are you really satisfied with that?”
“O, yes! Completely.”
“You do not want to get rid of me, now you know the burden you are undertaking?”
“That is nonsense. We have come to be true comrades, I hope. And so let that close the matter.”
She sat looking down, and purposelessly twining her fingers together. Then suddenly she raised her eyelids, and I thought I detected a moisture on them.
“I think,” she said—“you may—that is to say—will you call me Fifine, Cousin?”
Truly there is no help like pecuniary for expanding the human emotions. No wonder that an unscrupulous man with a purse can make his opportunities.
“On condition that you call me Felix,” I said; and so it was decided.
But though the compact as to those credit notes was made, and scrupulously insisted on by Fifine, I could see, to do her justice, that she was never easy under the compromise. Her pride of family, I opined, rebelled against that indebtedness to a stranger. So one day I said to her point-blank: “Tell me the truth: you are unhappy at not hearing from my sister. Would you like me to go and see her, and tell her of your difficulties?”
She stared at me with open eyes, into which a positive terror grew.