"It will be very amusing here now! I certainly shall not stay long!"
Madame de la Roche-Noire received this news very coolly; the young men had not seemed sufficiently dazzled by her charms for her to regret them. But Robineau, who was beginning to discover that since he had been married he did not enjoy himself as much as he hoped, exclaimed:
"What! you mean to leave us already? to go away? When, for heaven’s sake?"
"This very day," said Alfred.
"To-day! Oh! On my word, I won’t—we won’t allow it, it will cause my wife much distress. Just a few days more,—it isn’t right to go away so abruptly."
"Very well, we won’t go until to-morrow," replied Edouard, who had seemed lost in profound thought for some minutes.
"To-morrow it is then," said Alfred, who was surprised, however, that Edouard consented to defer their departure.
The guests soon separated, each to do what pleased him best. Eudoxie doubtless wished that Alfred should pay his last farewells to her, for she asked him for his arm for a walk in the garden; and Cornélie, left alone with Robineau, said to him:
"Why do you presume to keep these gentlemen at the château without finding out whether I would like it?"
"My love, I thought that——"