“Then tell it to me!” cried Rabourdin, angry for the first time since his marriage.
“There! it is half-past six o’clock; finish shaving and dress at once,” she cried hastily, after the fashion of women when pressed on a point they are not ready to talk of. “I must go; we’ll adjourn the discussion, for I don’t want to be nervous on a reception-day. Good heavens! the poor soul!” she thought, as she left the room, “it /is/ hard to be in labor for seven years and bring forth a dead child! And not trust his wife!”
She went back into the room.
“If you had listened to me you would never had interceded to keep your chief clerk; he stole that abominable paper, and has, no doubt, kept a fac-simile of it. Adieu, man of genius!”
Then she noticed the almost tragic expression of her husband’s grief; she felt she had gone too far, and ran to him, seized him just as he was, all lathered with soap-suds, and kissed him tenderly.
“Dear Xavier, don’t be vexed,” she said. “To-night, after the people are gone, we will study your plan; you shall speak at your ease,—I will listen just as long as you wish me to. Isn’t that nice of me? What do I want better than to be the wife of Mohammed?”
She began to laugh; and Rabourdin laughed too, for the soapsuds were clinging to Celestine’s lips, and her voice had the tones of the purest and most steadfast affection.
“Go and dress, dear child; and above all, don’t say a word of this to des Lupeaulx. Swear you will not. That is the only punishment that I impose—”
“/Impose/!” she cried. “Then I won’t swear anything.”
“Come, come, Celestine, I said in jest a really serious thing.”