I stared at him in amazement
“I do not understand,” I said, after a moment.
“Oh, come,” he burst out, his anger getting the better of him, “let us descend from the heights and get to business. You have possession, I suppose, of the body of my niece. I ask you what price you demand to deliver her to me?”
I felt my cheeks burning, but I determined to keep my temper.
“Monsieur,” I answered as quietly as I could, “my price is your promise to break off at once this wedding which you propose and to sign in the presence of witnesses a paper which I shall have executed in which you will agree to permit your niece to choose her own husband.”
“Believing, doubtless, that she will choose you!” he sneered. “May I ask, Monsieur, where you met my niece?”
“In the Rue de l’Evêque, as you know.”
“You had never met her before last night?”
“No. I had never seen her before that.”
He gazed at me astonished, for he saw that I spoke the truth.