Pauline laughed in answer, and not very pleasantly. "Don't tell me," she said. "I've been in Scotland for the shooting of the grouse. There is no Scotsman too sentimental to make money. What part of Scotland did you say you came from? La! la! la! And at your age, too!"
"On the contrary, the older I grow the more sentimental I become."
Pauline shook her head. "Mon Dieu!" she said; "every one knows that sentiment ends at forty."
The waiter, a quick-witted rogue enough, seemed to be thoroughly enjoying this midnight conversation. He stood with one arm akimbo, the other resting on the table, and grinned like a vulgar Mephistopheles. "If sentiment ends at forty," he said, "you, mademoiselle, will suffer from it for a long time to come."
"Ma foi, no! No suffering for me," Pauline replied. "I'm a very practical person. It would take a great deal to make me sentimental."
"I wonder how much?" the man answered. "A nice little hotel with a good trade, say?"
Pauline shrugged her shoulders. "No, that would mean work. I am used to seeing a life of sentiment without work."
The waiter once more began to clear the table. "It is a pity we see so much of what we cannot have," he answered, rattling the coffee-cups and silver.
Pauline made no reply to this, but stood by the fireplace in silence watching the waiter, and showing plainly by her manner that the conversation was over and that she was waiting for him to go.
Suddenly she started violently, as Jacques did also.