“What, Edouard, you laugh! You think so little of what I have told you?”
“I do what it is my duty to do, and I know how to behave.”
“Alas! you no longer love me, I see. Formerly you were more jealous.”
“One may love without being jealous; and besides—but it is getting late, and I have business that I must attend to.”
“What about that rich shipowner for whom you gave the party?”
“He was not able to come.”
“So all your expense was useless?”
“Useless! No, indeed; I was very warmly congratulated on my party. It will do me a great deal of good in the sequel, and I am delighted that I gave it.—I must leave you, for I have not a moment of my own.”
Edouard hurried away to Dufresne. That gentleman seemed a little disturbed at sight of him, but he soon recovered himself; it was not to talk about what his wife had told him that Murville was so eager to be with him, but to talk about the lovely woman with whom he had played écarté the night before, to find out who she was and what position she held in society; in a word, it was to dilate without reserve upon desires and hopes which he did not shrink from disclosing to his friend.
Dufresne gratified Edouard’s curiosity by informing him that Madame de Géran was the widow of a general, that she was absolutely her own mistress, that she had some means but possessed the art of spending money rapidly, because she was exceedingly fond of pleasure. Dufresne took pains to add that many men paid court to the young widow, but that she received their homage with indifference, treated love as a joke and made sport of the flames she kindled, and that her conquest seemed to be difficult of accomplishment.