“If you are speaking for yourself,” cried she, “you are a great ninny! Your Verdier will never marry you.”
“That is my business,” boldly replied the young girl.
After having contemptuously refused five or six suitors, a little clerk, the son of a tailor, and other young fellows whose prospects she did not consider good enough, she had ended by setting her cap at a barrister, whom she had met at the Dambrevilles’, and who was already turned forty. She considered him very clever, and destined to make a name in the world. But the misfortune was that for fifteen years past Verdier had been living with a mistress, who in the neighbourhood even passed for his wife. She knew of this, though, and by no means let it trouble her.
“My child,” said the father, raising his head once more, “I begged you not to think of this marriage. You know the situation.”
She stopped sucking her bone, and said with an air of impatience:
“What of it? Verdier has promised me he will leave her. She is a fool.”
“You are wrong, Hortense, to speak in that way. And if he should also leave you one day to return to her whom you would have caused him to abandon?”
“That is my business,” sharply retorted the young woman.
Berthe listened, fully acquainted with this matter, the contingencies of which she discussed daily with her sister. She was, besides, like her father, all in favour of the poor woman, whom it was proposed to turn out into the street, after having performed a wife’s duties for fifteen years. But Madame Josserand intervened.
“Leave off, do! those wretched women always end by returning to the gutter. Only, it is Verdier who will never bring himself to leave her. He is fooling you, my dear. In your place, I would not wait a second for him; I would try and find some one else.”