“If you didn’t recognize the sound, it is useless for me to tell you what it was.”
“Why, it seemed to me—but in the dark one may be mistaken.”
“Indeed! do you think that one doesn’t hear as well by night as by day?”
“The fact is that I can’t believe that anybody on my premises would venture——”
The sound of the second kiss interrupted him. The two gentlemen walked toward a clump of shrubbery near by, and saw Mademoiselle Tapotte in the marquis’s arms, defending herself very feebly, as her custom was; while the marquis, with flushed face, gleaming eye and thick voice, said to her:
“On my honor, you are a rose-bud, and I will have an assignation.”
But the rustling of the foliage caused the marquis to release his hold; Tapotte ran away, and Monsieur de Cligneval returned to the house, while Auguste said laughingly to La Thomassinière:
“It seems that your champagne changes the aspect of things: that mass of flesh has become a rose-bud.”
“Oh! that is court language. The marquis was joking, no doubt. However, I should have been terribly sorry to have him see us! A marquis, you know! I ought not to have seen anything! Monsieur Dalville, I urge you to maintain absolute secrecy about this matter; it is very important.”
“Never fear!”