Eugenie raised her eyes to heaven as her only answer.
“Ah ca, madame! what have you both been talking of?” said the banker, after a pause, pointing to the flowers. “What has happened to make your sister so anxious all of a sudden to go to your opera-box?”
The poor helot endeavored to escape questioning on the score of sleepiness, and turned to go into her dressing-room to prepare for the night; but du Tillet took her by the arm and brought her back under the full light of the wax-candles which were burning in two silver-gilt sconces between fragrant nosegays. He plunged his light eyes into hers and said, coldly:—
“Your sister came here to borrow forty thousand francs for a man in whom she takes an interest, who’ll be locked up within three days in a debtor’s prison.”
The poor woman was seized with a nervous trembling, which she endeavored to repress.
“You alarm me,” she said. “But my sister is far too well brought up, and she loves her husband too much to be interested in any man to that extent.”
“Quite the contrary,” he said, dryly. “Girls brought up as you two were, in the constraints and practice of piety, have a thirst for liberty; they desire happiness, and the happiness they get in marriage is never as fine as that they dreamt of. Such girls make bad wives.”
“Speak for me,” said poor Eugenie, in a tone of bitter feeling, “but respect my sister. The Comtesse de Vandenesse is happy; her husband gives her too much freedom not to make her truly attached to him. Besides, if your supposition were true, she would never have told me of such a matter.”
“It is true,” he said, “and I forbid you to have anything to do with the affair. My interests demand that the man shall go to prison. Remember my orders.”
Madame du Tillet left the room.