"Oh! Valerie," cried Henri Montes, clasping her in his arms, "that is impossible!—Come to Brazil!"
Valerie looked in his face, and saw him her slave.
"Well, if you still love me, Henri, two years hence I will be your wife; but your expression at this moment strikes me as very suspicious."
"I swear to you that they made me drink, that false friends threw this girl on my hands, and that the whole thing is the outcome of chance!" said Montes.
"Then I am to forgive you?" she asked, with a smile.
"But you will marry, all the same?" asked the Baron, in an agony of jealousy.
"Eighty thousand francs a year!" said she, with almost comical enthusiasm. "And Crevel loves me so much that he will die of it!"
"Ah! I understand," said Montes.
"Well, then, in a few days we will come to an understanding," said she.
And she departed triumphant.