"Well, well! so you know me now! Ha! ha! this is amusing; I was beginning to think I had made a mistake myself."
"Come, Beauregard, don't be so spiteful! don't betray me! What motive can you have for injuring me? Have I ever done anything to you?"
"You? oh! you certainly have done no more to me than to other men. And yet—there is a certain matter—But let us not talk of that here; this place would be ill chosen for a serious conversation. I will see you again, and then, I hope, you will answer my questions frankly. I will leave you now, and if I see young Edmond, I will tell him nothing."
"Do you want me to swear?"
"No, that is not necessary."
"You are right; between ourselves, you and I know what to think of oaths."
And the gentleman, with a very slight inclination of the head, left the box in which the two dominos were.
II
EDMOND AND FRELUCHON
In a pleasant little bachelor apartment, on the fourth floor, but in a house occupied by most excellent tenants, on Rue de Provence, a young man hardly twenty-six years of age was impatiently pacing the floor of a bedroom which was used also as a salon. He glanced constantly at a small clock on the mantel, and muttered: