“Must not!” repeated the little man, querulously. “That is very fine, but who is to keep him away? It appears to me that there was never such a world as this for gossip. Instead of minding their own affairs, people talk, talk, like so many parrots, and who is to make sure that their mischievous tongues will not one day carry the news to the wrong person?”
His wife darted a contemptuous glance at him. “It is a lottery, as I told you before,” she said coldly. “One or other must lose.”
“And you talk of it so calmly! Do you know what a frightful risk I run? If M. Saint-Martin comes home, and the little hindrances I have put in his way are discovered—or if that girl finds out the double payment, I am ruined! I shudder when I think of it.”
He was shuddering. It was a hot June day, and he shivered as if he had the ague. Madame looked at him with still the same expression in her face.
“You are a coward, Ignace,” at last she said, letting her words drop slowly, “and that makes you a fool. Do you suppose that I have not weighed the risk? Do you suppose that I am not watching?”
Under her eyes he shivered more visibly. “I know,” he said in a submissive voice; “I only thought—”
“Do not think,” she interrupted contemptuously; “leave thinking to me.”
“He might write to her,” M. Roulleau muttered under his breath.
“What are you saying?”
“Do not be angry, Zénobie; I only remarked that he might write to her.”