“Haven’t you a certain Madame Dalmont here—a so-called widow, who has a young woman living with her?”
“Yes, we have,” replied Madame Droguet with a sneering smile. “But, between us, dear Madame de Belleville, I don’t think that they are people worthy to be received at your house. In the first place, they are not polite. When they came here to live they did not call upon us as is customary.”
“That indicates at once a lack of savoir-vivre.”
“Does it not, madame? Then they have struck up a friendship with a very low-lived person, a sort of wolf, whom nobody in the neighborhood cared to know, and who seems to be on the best of terms with them already. He walks home with them at night. And then——”
“What! isn’t that all?”
“A young man from Paris, named Edmond Didier, hired a house here in Chelles, soon after those strangers came here. And since he’s been here, he passes almost all his time at their house, until it’s got to be a perfect scandal. I am not evil-minded certainly, but there are things one can’t help seeing.—Let your waistcoat alone, Droguet, and button yourself up!”
“What you tell me on the subject of these women, madame, does not surprise me in the least,” cried Thélénie, delighted by what she had heard. “We have known Monsieur Edmond Didier a long while; my husband was once very intimate with him——”
At this point, Chamoureau, who had not been able as yet to put in a word and had confined himself to watching Monsieur Droguet as he felt for the missing buttons or wrenched off the others,—Chamoureau thought that he saw an opportunity to speak.
“Yes,” he said, “I used to know Monsieur Edmond Didier—that is to say, through Freluchon, who used—at the time when——”
Thélénie made haste to cut him short: