“But he goes back to her,” said Clementine, “and he will forgive her! It is for such horrible women as that that you men have indulgence.”
“Well, they need it,” said Adam.
“Thaddeus used to show some decency—in living apart from us,” she remarked. “He had better go altogether.”
“Oh, my dear angel, that’s going too far,” said the count, who did not want the death of the sinner.
Paz, who knew Adam thoroughly, had enjoined him to secrecy, pretending to excuse his dissipations, and had asked his friend to lend him a few thousand francs for Malaga.
“He is a very firm fellow,” said Adam.
“How so?” asked Clementine.
“Why, for having spent no more than ten thousand francs on her, and letting her send him that letter before he would ask me for enough to pay her debts. For a Pole, I call that firm.”
“He will ruin you,” said Clementine, in the sharp tone of a Parisian woman, when she shows her feline distrusts.
“Oh, I know him,” said Adam; “he will sacrifice Malaga, if I ask him.”