"Well!" proposed Lise at length, "come without her, uncle, and bring the girl."
Monsieur Charles was not listening, however, having relapsed into an agitated state. He was going to the window, seemingly on the look-out for some one, and was swallowing a rising burst of anger. Unable to contain himself any further, he dismissed the young girl with a word.
"Go away and play for a minute or two, my darling," he said.
Then, when she had left—being accustomed to be sent away while grown-up people talked—he took his stand in the middle of the room and folded his arms, while his full, yellow-tinted, respectable face—very like that of a retired magistrate—quivered with indignation.
"Would you believe it? Such an abominable thing! I was trimming my rose-tree, and I had got on to the highest rung of the ladder, and was bending mechanically over the wall, when what do I see? Honorine, my maid Honorine, with a man, at their dirty tricks! At the foot of my wall, too, the swine, the swine!"
He was choking, and began to pace up and down, with noble maledictory gestures.
"I'm waiting for her to pack her off, the disreputable hussy! We can't keep one. They're always put into the family-way. Regularly, at the end of six months, they become a perfect sight, and there's no having them in a respectable family. And now this one, caught in the act! Ah! the end of the world is come; there are no bounds to debauchery now-a-days!"
Buteau and Lise, who were astounded, joined, out of deference, in his indignation.
"Certainly, it's not proper; not at all proper—oh, no!"
He set himself in front of them once more.