“Vraiment! I ask you again—have you thought of anything, Gregoire?”
He does not make immediate answer, but seems to ponder over, or hang back upon it. When at length given it is itself an interrogation, apparently unconnected with what they have been speaking about.
“Would it greatly surprise you, if to-night your husband didn’t come home to you?”
“Certainly not—in the least. Why should it? It wouldn’t be the first time by scores—hundreds—for him to stay all night away from me. Aye, and at that same Welsh Harp, too—many’s the night.”
“To your great annoyance, no doubt; if it did not make you dreadfully jealous?”
She breaks out into a laugh, hollow and heartless, as was ever heard in an allée of the Jardin Mabille. When it is ended she adds gravely:—
“The time was when he might have made me so; I may as well admit that. Not now, as you know, Gregoire. Now, instead of feeling annoyed by it, I’d only be too glad to think I should never see his face again. Le brute ivrogne!”
To this monstrous declaration Rogier laconically rejoins:—
“You may not.” Then placing his lips close to her ear, he adds in a whisper, “If all prosper, as planned, you will not!”
She neither starts, nor seeks to inquire further. She knows he has conceived some scheme to disembarrass her of a husband, she no longer care? for, to both become inconvenient. And from what has gone before, she can rely on Rogier with its execution.