Again he looked at her, trying to read her face and to divine why she insisted on speaking of Caffie, when he had just expressed a wish not to speak of him. What was there beneath this insistence?
“I will listen,” he said; “and, since you wish to ask my advice on the subject, you must tell me immediately what you mean.”
“You are right; and I should have told you before, but embarrassment and shame restrained me. And I reproach myself, for with you I should feel neither embarrassment nor reproach.”
“Assuredly.”
“But before everything else, I must tell you—you must know—that my brother Florentin is a good and honest boy; you must believe it, you must be convinced of it.”
“I am, since you tell me so. Besides, he produced the best impression on me during the short time I saw him the other day at your house.”
“Would not one see immediately that he has a good nature?”
“Certainly.”
“Frank and upright; weak, it is true, and a little effeminate also, that is, lacking energy, letting himself be carried away by goodness and tenderness. This weakness made him commit a fault before his departure for America. I have kept it from you until this moment, but you must know it now. Loving a woman who controlled him and made him do what she wished, he let himself be persuaded to-take a sum of forty-five francs that she demanded, that she insisted on having that evening, hoping to be able to replace it three days later, without his employer discovering it.”
“His employer was Caffie?”