"Well, now, if you should happen to see something agreeable in me, and should let me know about it, I shouldn't throw your Mr. Amden, or Amidon, at your head. Why not forget about the rest of the world for a while? We can be in only one place at a time, and so, really, our whole world just now has only us two. You oughtn't to repel the only person in the wide, wide world; you won't, will you?"
"Don't be foolish!"
"Don't be wasteful! This may be the only world of this kind we shall be allowed to have. Come over and sit by me and be nice to me, won't you?"
"I certainly shall do nothing of the kind!"
"No? Ah, how wasteful of opportunity! Well, then, I shall have to come to you!"
Oh, the depravity of society in these days, and oh, the unpleasantness of setting these things down! But, on the other hand, what a comfort it is to think that men as base as Brassfield are so rare that you and I, my boy, have probably never met a specimen. And if you ever find, my love, that any person in whom you have any tender interest has ever behaved in a way similar to the conduct of Brassfield, you should give the prisoner the benefit of every doubt, and accord full weight to the precedent contained in this history, and to the fact that it was Brassfield and not Amidon who did this. A man can not be blamed for lapsing into the Brassfield state. A man should be acquitted—eh? Defending some one? Why, certainly not! And how long this paragraph is growing! Yes, I feel sure Clara Blatherwick repulsed these advances as she should, and that Brassfield, being fully under "control," did not—why, of course not, as you say!
But I am going no further with the matter now; except to say that in something like an hour Mr. Amidon departed much perturbed by the prospect of the nearness of his happiness, fully convinced of his unworthiness, and quakingly uncertain as to many things, but most of all, just then, as to his clothes!
"This man Brassfield," said he to himself, "seems to have been a good deal of a dude, and Elizabeth—the darling!—will expect me to be fully up to vogue in this regard—as she will be in all things. And I don't believe a thing has been done about clothes."
Meantime, Madame le Claire walked up and down in a locked chamber, struggling with her grief.
"Oh, it is hopeless, hopeless!" said the poor girl to herself, over and over again. "Florian, my darling Florian, whom I found blind and wandering in the wilderness, and took by the hand and guided to the light—Florian has gone from me! She has taken him, just as she took him before. But the man she thinks loves her—her Eugene—I'm sure he's coming to love me; and to be tired of her! And I could keep him Brassfield, if I chose—if I chose! I wonder—I wonder if it would be wrong? What would she do if she had my power? Twice I had to try, before I could restore him. I could! I could!"