"Ah! good girl!"
"All you require is that Captain de Lavardens shall no longer seek me for his wife. Is that it?"
"That's it."
"Very well. I know what would repel him—it shall be done to-night. But you, gentlemen, will have to make the opportunity for me; you will have to bring him to my place—both of you. You can find some reason for proposing it? Tonight at nine o'clock. He knows the address."
She moved weakly to the door.
De Lavardens took three strides and grasped her hands. "Mademoiselle," he stuttered, "I have no words to speak my gratitude. I am a father, and I love my son, but—mon Dieu! if—if things had been different, upon my soul, I should have been proud to call you my daughter-in-law!"
Oh, how she could bow, that woman—the eloquence of her ill-fed form!
"Au revoir, gentlemen," she said.
Phew! We dropped into chairs.
"Paul," he grunted at me, "we have been a pair of brutes!"