"I should have been glad to end this interview less abruptly, monsieur. Will you, therefore, be kind enough to excuse me, and to attribute my hasty retreat to an insistence on your part which places me in the most disagreeable, I was about to say the most ridiculous, position imaginable."
And having uttered these words, Olivier walked out of the room, in spite of the baron's despairing protests.
That gentleman, half frantic with disappointment and anger, rushed towards the door leading into the room where the hunchback and the two young girls were standing, and pulling aside the portière, exclaimed:
"And now will you be good enough to explain the meaning of all this? Why have you made such a fool of me? And why does this M. Olivier refuse Mlle. de Beaumesnil's hand, and declare he has never seen her in his life when you assure me that he and my ward are desperately in love with each other?"
CHAPTER XXVII.
THE MYSTERY DEEPENS.
But M. de la Rochaiguë's bewilderment was by no means at an end.
The baron had fully expected to find the unseen auditors of the foregoing conversation in a state of intense consternation over M. Olivier's refusal.
Far from it.
Mlle. de Beaumesnil and Herminie, clasped in each other's arms, were laughing and crying and kissing each other in a transport of half delirious joy.
"He refused me! He refused me!" exclaimed Ernestine, in accents of ineffable delight.