"Madame is very easily fatigued," the husband replied, throwing down his hat with a savage sneer, "especially when she is doing anything she does not like."
"You are for Paris," Nôtredame answered, with apparent surprise. "I thought all ladies liked Paris. Now, if madame were leaving Paris and going to the country----"
"The country!" M. de Vidoche exclaimed, with an impatient oath. "She would bury herself there if she could!" And he added something under his breath, the point of which it was not very difficult to guess.
Madame de Vidoche forced a smile, striving, woman-like, to cover all. "It is natural I should like Pinatel," she said timidly, her eye on her husband. "I have lived there so much."
"Yes, madame, you are never tired of reminding me of that!" M. de Vidoche retorted harshly. Women who are afraid of their husbands say the right thing once in a hundred times. "You will tell this gentleman in a moment that I was a beggar when I married you! But if I was----"
"Oh, Charles!" she murmured faintly.
"That is right! Cry now!" he exclaimed brutally. "Thank God, however, here is supper. And after supper we go on to Vernon. The roads are rutty, and you will have something else to do besides cry then."
The man in black, going on with his meal at the other end of the table, listened with an impassive face. Like all his profession, he seemed inclined to hear rather than to talk. But when supper came up with only one plate for the two--a mistake due to the crowded state of the inn--and M. de Vidoche fell to scolding very loudly, he seemed unable to refrain from saying a word in the innkeeper's defence. "It is not so very unusual for the husband to share his wife's plate," he said coolly; "and sometimes a good deal more that is hers."
M. de Vidoche looked at him for a moment, as if he were minded to ask him what business it was of his; but he thought better of it, and instead said, with a scowl, "It is not so very unusual either for astrologers to make mistakes."
"Quacks," the man in black said calmly.