One evening, being the first to arrive, he found the old lady alone in the drawing-room. “Well! little one,” he asked, with his smiling familiarity, “are your affairs going on all right? Why the deuce do you make such mysteries with me?”
“I’m not hiding anything from you,” Félicité replied, somewhat perplexed.
“Come, do you think you can deceive an old fox like me, eh? My dear child, treat me as a friend. I’m quite ready to help you secretly. Come now, be frank!”
A bright idea struck Félicité. She had nothing to tell; but perhaps she might find out something if she kept quiet.
“Why do you smile?” Monsieur de Carnavant resumed. “That’s the beginning of a confession, you know. I suspected that you must be behind your husband. Pierre is too stupid to invent the pretty treason you are hatching. I sincerely hope the Bonapartists will give you what I should have asked for you from the Bourbons.”
This single sentence confirmed the suspicions which the old woman had entertained for some time past.
“Prince Louis has every chance, hasn’t he?” she eagerly inquired.
“Will you betray me if I tell you that I believe so?” the marquis laughingly replied. “I’ve donned my mourning over it, little one. I’m simply a poor old man, worn out and only fit to be laid on the shelf. It was for you, however, that I was working. Since you have been able to find the right track without me, I shall feel some consolation in seeing you triumph amidst my own defeat. Above all things, don’t make any more mysteries. Come to me if you are ever in trouble.”
And he added, with the sceptical smile of a nobleman who has lost caste: “Pshaw! I also can go in for a little treachery!”
At this moment the clan of retired oil and almond dealers arrived.