"I know her name, nothing more."
"Isn't she a friend of Madame d'Estrelle?"
"I have no idea."
"But you know Madame d'Estrelle?"
"No, uncle."
"You have never seen her?"
"Never."
Julien told this lie with resolution. It seemed to him that everybody was trying to pry into his secret, and he had determined to conceal it more securely with a cloak of savage distrust.
"That's funny," continued Uncle Antoine, who may have conceived some suspicions of his own in order to remain true to his habit of suspecting everybody. "Your mother passes hours and days in her garden, even in her salon, they say, and you——"
"I am not my mother."