"If you will kindly hand it to the lady who gave you my address, monsieur, with the linen for the shirts, I will go there and get them; for, of course, you would not bring the package here yourself."
She was determined to find out who had given me her address. In my earnest desire to obtain her confidence, I said:
"Oh! I thought that you would probably undertake to buy it yourself—the linen, or percale, or Scotch batiste, or what you will; for I don't know anything about it; ladies are better at buying such things than we are. I can bring you a pattern; I will roll it up and put it in my pocket, and you won't need to put yourself out. In view of your condition, madame, you should avoid fatigue as much as possible."
"But, monsieur, if I go out to buy linen, it won't be any extra trouble to call on the lady; and I can thank her at the same time for thinking about me."
"Oh! that is natural enough! She knew that you could—that you had more claim than most women to her interest. She said to me: 'Mademoiselle Mignonne—that is to say, Madame Landernoy—deserves your full confidence, and I commend her to you.'"
The moment that I mentioned the name of Mignonne, she sprang to her feet from the chair she had taken; her brow clouded, she fixed her eyes on the floor, trembling convulsively, and murmured:
"Who told you, monsieur, that my name was Mignonne? None of the people I have worked for have known me by any other name than that of Madame Landernoy."
"Mon Dieu! I can't remember now, madame. But someone must have told me. That lady probably learned it by accident."
Mignonne made a slight movement of her shoulders, which I could not interpret as flattering to me. To be sure, for the last minute I had been stumbling and splashing about, with no idea of what I was saying. I saw that I had made an egregious blunder by calling her Mignonne. Of course, her Christian name was not generally known; and, as I knew it, she thought, no doubt, that I was a friend of the man who had so shamelessly betrayed her; perhaps she imagined that Fouvenard had sent me to her. That idea drove me to despair. A fine thing I had done, parbleu! How was I to regain her confidence?
I took two hundred francs from my pocket and handed them to her, saying: