"I want you not, go!" he said. "See you not that I arrange myself for repose? Go, and leave me in peace! I see no one when my wife and granddaughter are away."
"Yes, but you will see me," said Louise, suddenly bursting into the room, her grass-green hat all awry, her features flushed, her small eyes full of a delighted vengeance.
"I have come about your petite Comtesse," said Louise. "See, behold, you will listen!"
"Leave us, Gustave," said le Comte, and Gustave closed the door and applied his ear with great skill to the key-hole.
"What have you come about?" said the Comte in a voice of high displeasure. "This is my hour for repose. I see no strangers, more particularly those like yourself."
The eyes of Louise flashed with anger.
"If I suit not your taste, old man," she said, "you have but your granddaughter to blame. She sold me my chapeau in the établissement of your good wife. She goes there each day. Ask her, she cannot deny!"
The Comte felt very queer and sick, a kind of giddiness came over him, that terrible faintness from which at times he suffered was approaching, the world looked very dark.
Suddenly he pulled himself together. He found his eyes fixed on the hideous grass-green hat, never surely could his little Margot sell anything so frightful to so low-down a customer.
"Leave me, I feel faint," he said. "Send to me my man Gustave, and go! I command you to go at once!"