‘You seem to be better off than you used to be, my friend,’ she said to him one day. ‘Unless I deceive myself, that is a new coat.’
‘Yes,’ answered the man of the world, without blushing. ‘I have been dabbling a little on the Stock Exchange, and have had better luck than usual.’
Desrolles stirred the heaped-up coals into a blaze, and filled himself a third glass of cognac.
‘It’s as fine as a liqueur,’ he said, smacking his lips. ‘It would be a sin to dilute such stuff. By the way, when do you expect your husband?’
‘I never expect him,’ answered La Chicot. ‘He goes and comes as he chooses. He is like the wandering Jew.’
‘He is gone to Paris on business, I suppose!’
‘On business or pleasure. I neither know nor care which. He earns his living. Those ridiculous pictures of his please both in London and Paris. See here!’
She tossed him over a crumpled heap of comic papers, English and French. Her husband’s name figured in all, affixed to the wildest caricatures—scenes theatrical and Bohemian, sketches full of life and humour.
‘To judge from those you would suppose he was rather a cheerful companion,’ said La Chicot, ‘and yet he is more dismal than a funeral.’
‘He vents all his cheerfulness on his wood blocks,’ suggested Desrolles.