“And I,” she exclaimed,—“I tell you that this marriage is senseless.”
“I wish it were still more so, that I might the better show to Gilberte how dear she is to me.”
Calm in appearance, the baroness was scratching with her nails the satin of the chair on which she was sitting.
“Then,” she went on, “your resolution is settled.”
“Irrevocably.”
“Still, now, come, between us who are no longer children, suppose M. de Thaller were to double Cesarine’s dowry, to treble it?”
An expression of intense disgust contracted the manly features of Marius de Tregars.
“Ah! not another word, madame,” he interrupted.
There was no hope left. Mme. de Thaller fully realized it by the tone in which he spoke. She remained pensive for over a minute, and suddenly, like a person who has finally made up her mind, she rang.
A footman appeared.