“Mince, alors!” cried Blanche to Sylvia. “And, you know, I don’t want to give him up, because he has thirty thousand francs and he loves me à la folie. We are only waiting till he has finished his military service to get married. But I don’t want him here. First of all, I have a very chic lover, who has a poignon fou and doesn’t care how much he spends, and then the lover of my heart is here.”
Sylvia protested that she had heard the last claim too often.
“No, but this is something much greater than a béguin. It is real love. Il est très trr-ès-beau garçon, tu sais. And, chose très-drôle, he also is doing his military service here. Tout ça ne se dessine pas du tout bien, tu sais, mais pas du tout, tu comprends! Moi, je ne suis pas veineuse. Ah, non, alors, c’est le comble!”
Blanche had been sufficiently agile to extract the usual wagonette and pair of horses from the chic lover to whom she had introduced her real lover, a tall cuirassier with fierce mustaches, as her brother; but the imminent arrival of Louis was going to spoil all this, because Louis knew well that she did not possess a relative in the world, in fact, as Blanche emphasized, her solitary position had been one of her charms.
“You’ll have to get rid of Monsieur Beaujour.” This was the rich lover.
“And lose my horses? Ah, non, alors!”
“Well, then you’ll have to tell Marcel he mustn’t come near you until Louis has gone.”
“And see him go off with that Jeanne at the Clair de la Lune Concert!”
“Couldn’t Louis pay for the horses?” suggested Sylvia.
“I’m not going to let him waste his money like that; besides, he’ll only be here two nights. C’est assommant, tu sais,” Blanche sighed.