“All right! let him go before his justice of the peace! I won’t go myself, that’s all.—How unfortunate it is to have to do with such people!—Heavens!—someone else is ringing; can it be that that clown has come back?”
“This time I will take my broom, and if it’s the grocer again, I will sweep his legs out from under him!”
Mademoiselle Lizida went out in a rage. Madame de Grangeville listened, this time with some little emotion; but she heard no voices, it was evidently not a creditor. The maid reappeared with a very different expression.
“Monsieur de Merval asks if he may present his respects to madame la baronne?”
“Yes, to be sure; show him in.”
And the baroness made haste to cast another glance at the mirror, to arrange her hair and to assume a gracious attitude in her easy-chair.
Monsieur de Merval was ushered into the room; he entered with the exquisite courtesy which distinguished him, and took a chair near Madame de Grangeville, who said to him with her most engaging smile:
“I am very glad that you remembered the promise that you gave me at Monsieur Glumeau’s. I did not rely very much upon it.”
“Why so, madame? Do you think that I also was not delighted to meet again, to see once more, a person who carried me back to the pleasant days of my youth—in memory, to be sure; but those memories are too agreeable ever to be effaced entirely.”
“Dear Armand!—I beg pardon, will you permit me still to call you so?”