"Listen, Monsieur Thierry; will you give me your word as a man of honor that you fully understand me, that you are quite sure of the sincerity and unselfishness of my behavior toward you?"
"Yes, madame, I give you my word of honor. If that wasn't so, mordié! do you suppose I would have come to see you again?"
"Very well, then I accept," said Julie, offering him her hand; "but on one condition, and that is that you give me back your good will."
Old Antoine lost his head when he felt that soft little hand in his hard dry one. He had a sort of dizzy feeling, and, in his uncertainty what to do with that hand, which he thought that he ought not to kiss, and which he dared not press, he let it fall again, and stammered out his thanks incoherently, but with something like warmth.
"Since you treat me as if you were my debtor," continued Madame d'Estrelle, "I warn you that I shall be very exacting. As a matter of fact, I need only twenty thousand francs for the moment. Authorize me to offer the other twenty thousand to Madame Thierry as from you."
"Oh! that isn't possible!" said Antoine angrily. "She will refuse.—There's a person who detests me! I have just been to call on her. She turned tail and ran up into her garret!"
"Is it that you have wronged her in some way then, neighbor?"
"Never! If she chooses to think otherwise—But let her say what she will, I am an honorable man."
"She has never said that you weren't."
"Has she never spoken to you about me? Come, on your word of honor?"