"To torment you? and how could it torment you if I chose to be agreeable to M. de Bernès?"
"How?" stuttered M. de Rueille, very much confused; "why, I have just told you I am not—we are not accustomed to seeing you make a fuss like that, especially of a young man! No, I assure you, I was amazed. I am still, in fact."
"And I am ever so sorry to have vexed you," she said sweetly. "Yes, I am really; you see, I had never noticed M. de Bernès particularly, and I wanted to see whether all the nice things M. de Clagny had told me about him were quite true, and so I was studying him. Will you forgive me?"
M. de Rueille did not reply to this, as he had another grievance on his mind.
"With Clagny, too, you have a way of carrying on, which is not at all the thing. He is an old man; that's all well and good; but, you know, he is not so ancient yet for you to be able to take such liberties with him!"
"What do you call liberties?"
"Well, sometimes you appear to admire him, to be in ecstasies about him; and then sometimes you coax and wheedle him in the most absurd way, as you did yesterday."
"Yesterday! I coaxed and wheedled M. de Clagny? I?"
"You!"
"But about what?"