"Yes. Yes, the second."
"You have two of them?"
"Three, monsieur; one a year."
And Duchoux looked full of pride.
The baron was thinking:
"If they all have the same perfume, their nursery must be a real conservatory."
He continued:
"Yes, I would like a nice piece of ground near the sea, on a little solitary strip of beach—"
Thereupon Duchoux proceeded to explain. He had ten, twenty, fifty, a hundred, or more, pieces of ground of the kind required, at different prices and suited to different tastes. He talked just as a fountain flows, smiling, self-satisfied, wagging his bald round head.
And Mordiane was reminded of a little woman, fair-haired, slight, with a somewhat melancholy look, and a tender fashion of murmuring, "My darling," of which the mere remembrance made the blood stir in his veins. She had loved him passionately, madly, for three months; then, becoming pregnant in the absence of her husband, who was a governor of a colony, she had run away and concealed herself, distracted with despair and terror, till the birth of the child, which Mordiane carried off one summer's evening, and which they had not laid eyes on afterwards.