"So soon?" said she. "You are a marvel; a thousand thanks!" And she held out her hand.
The young man shook his head, smiling. "I was coming to see you," he repeated.
Madame de Vigerie smiled too. "Very well," she said, "But not now, for I am not going home. Come some afternoon next week."
Armand's face fell a little. "That is very much deferred payment," he observed. "And perhaps I may not be in Paris."
"Indeed? And where are you going?"
"My wife is absolutely set on going to Brittany at once."
"But why?"
"Heaven alone knows. I do not."
The Vicomtesse considered a moment, the point of her parasol patterning the gravel. Then a sort of flash passed over her countenance, "You will go," she predicted. "So had you not better give me the book now?"
Armand stared at her, nonplussed by the certainty of her tone and by the mischievous amusement in her face. "Mark my words," she continued, "you will not be here next week—though I am quite aware that you were only using that possibility as a threat. Adieu; my friends, you see, are waiting for me. We shall see who is right. I shall be at St. Clair in June; I suppose I must resign myself to wait for the book till then." And so she left him, outraged with the thought that she considered him the plaything of a wife's idle wishes, and he returned, not too well pleased, to the Rue St. Dominique.