“Say, do you keep this impertinent young whipper-snapper here to insult your clients?” hissed Pauline, leaning forward and forcing the words out between her teeth, her blue eyes hard as steel and her great chin thrust forward like a rock. “I’ve brought you this bill, Monsieur Flaubert—this isn’t the first time I’ve suspected some monkey trick in my account here—but this time I know it! It won’t be of any use your lying about it. I can prove the mistake and I can prove where it is. Take this paper I’ve got here, and look through it, and then tell me you’ve not cheated me, if you dare! I tell you what it is, Monsieur, I’ll have these two accounts published in the leading journals throughout your little one-horse village by to-night if you don’t climb down pretty quick—Toriallis or no Toriallis!”
Jean looked at Flaubert with a sympathetic glance; it was very disagreeable to have a mad woman to deal with, and he was sorry for Flaubert. He thought Pauline was mad. To his intense astonishment he saw that Flaubert was white to the lips and trembling like a leaf—great beads of perspiration stood out on his forehead, and he smiled in a sickly way, first at the paper in his shaking hands, and then at Pauline. He moistened his lips before he spoke, and gave Jean a quick, furtive look under his eye-lashes.
“I regret infinitely, Mademoiselle,” he said, “that a mistake should have been made; it is nothing more, I assure you; still it is very natural that you should be annoyed by it. I have not had my secretary here very long, and he is not much up to affairs! You know, Ucelles, you owned to me yourself only this morning that you had a very poor head for business,” said Flaubert, turning to Jean. He had recovered himself by now, the colour had come back to his face. He looked in Jean’s direction, but he did not meet his eyes. “I fear I must ask you, Mademoiselle, to overlook my secretary’s little mistake and to accept our most humble apologies. I trust you will let this affair go no further. I can answer for Monsieur D’Ucelles’ good intentions as I can for my own, and if it reached the ears of the Toriallis they might be annoyed.”
“It shall reach them,” said Pauline sharply.
“I meant annoyed with you, Mademoiselle,” interposed Flaubert, whose confidence was now fully returned. “Signor Torialli is so impetuous, and your attack on me has not been very temperate. It would be such a pity to stop your lessons just now, when your voice is profiting so greatly.”
Pauline paused for a moment. Her lip curved scornfully as she looked at Jean. He had started forward at the first words of Flaubert’s speech, stung beyond his own control and ready with a vehement denial. But even as he did so Flaubert’s words about Madame came back to him; he must do nothing that might be against her interests, and he was in the presence of something that he did not understand. He drew back and stood quietly waiting with his eyes on Pauline.
“As for you, Jean D’Ucelles,” she said, “I guess you’re just about the poorest-headed, lost lamb of a Weary Willie I ever struck! I don’t see, Monsieur Flaubert, how you can suppose a man who has never had anything of his own to look after is likely to make much of a hand looking after anybody else’s accounts! If he ever turned up our side of the water they’d send him brick-picking! Now see here! I’ll give you back this bill this one time; make it out again, and let me advise you to send it to me correct! You’ve tried to fool me twice, and it hasn’t paid you any, I guess—but if you try the third time, Louis Flaubert, I’ll turn you down!”
Pauline swept from the room. Flaubert went to the door with her while Jean stood quite still, trying to understand what had happened, and what he must say to Flaubert when he came back. He knew now what all his little misgivings and discomforts had led to—they had led to this; and yet he dared not say even to himself what this was. He had one thing that he could still hold to, and for the sake of holding to that one thing he must make up his mind quickly to let everything else go. He was where he was in order to serve Madame Torialli, and if the man she trusted in was a thief and a liar, the more need she would have of Jean to stand by her, and watch over her; and to do this he must overcome his natural instinct, which was to seize Flaubert and kick him with contumely and finality out of the house.
Louis came back humming a little dance tune, and rubbing his hands together; he did not appear to see Jean standing in the middle of the room with sombre eyes. He smiled cheerfully.
“Well, the storm is over, the sun is out again,” he said. “That big Pauline would make a terrible wife; she should marry a lion-tamer or an apâche; but we have escaped that difficulty, my dear fellow, and now she is out of the house would you mind making a list of the appointments you know, and I shall just try over some of these new accompaniments?”