"As to that, I can't answer. If they adore each other, it hardly appears on the surface!"
"What! Fanny doesn't love her husband?"
"I don't say that she doesn't love him! but my sister isn't capable of loving like us—like you, I mean. She has so much to take up her time in the way of gowns, head-dresses, new styles, and so forth! How do you suppose she can find time to love her husband?"
"However, I am entirely innocent in this matter of the duel."
"Oh! that is what I have always told father, who has only known it a few days, by the way. For, as you can imagine, they didn't publish it. Monsieur Monléard's injury was supposed to have been caused by a fall on the stairs."
"But why doesn't your father want me to come here? It wasn't a crime to love his elder daughter and to aspire to her hand! It is true, I was very poor, then; to-day, I could offer her more; my uncle, who is very well satisfied with the way I attend to business now, said to me at breakfast this morning: 'From to-day, I give you an interest in my business, and I guarantee you not less than ten thousand francs a year, whether there are any profits or not.'"
"Ah! that is very nice, Monsieur Gustave; I am very glad for you."
"Dear little sister! If you knew how indifferently I received the news of this increase in my income! Ah! that isn't what I look to for happiness!"
"Nor I, either! But, as so many people think differently, probably we are wrong."
"I am thinking about your father, who doesn't want me to come here any more."