"You know well 'tis impossible!"
"Why?"
"Ah! because——"
They went on side by side, she leaning on his arm, and the flounces of her gown kept flapping against his legs. Then, he recalled to mind one winter twilight when on the same footpath Madame Arnoux walked thus by his side, and he became so much absorbed in this recollection that he no longer saw Rosanette, and did not bestow a thought upon her.
She kept looking straight before her in a careless fashion, lagging a little, like a lazy child. It was the hour when people had just come back from their promenade, and equipages were making their way at a quick trot over the hard pavement.
Pellerin's flatteries having probably recurred to her mind, she heaved a sigh.
"Ah! there are some lucky women in the world. Decidedly, I was made for a rich man!"
He replied, with a certain brutality in his tone:
"You have one, in the meantime!" for M. Oudry was looked upon as a man that could count a million three times over.
She asked for nothing better than to get free from him.