“Everybody believes that you are my mistress.”
“What matters it, since it is not so?”
Maxence did not dare to confess that this was precisely what made him doubly angry; and he shuddered at the thought of the ridicule that would certainly be heaped upon him, if the true state of the case was known.
“We ought to move,” he suggested.
“What’s the use? Wherever we should go, it would be the same thing. Besides, I don’t want to leave this neighborhood.”
“And I am too much your friend not to tell you, that your reputation in it is absolutely lost.”
“I have no accounts to render to any one.”
“Except to your friend the commissary of police, however.”
A pale smile flitted upon her lips. “Ah!” she uttered, “he knows the truth.”
“You have seen him again, then?”