"Exactly. But stop a moment, waiter; will you permit me to kiss your hand?"
"I haven't time," she said, smiling, and she drove the corkscrew bravely into the neck of a bottle. "Chambertin!—a pretty name. And, besides, do you remember, before we were married—sapristi, what a hard cork!—you told me you liked it on account of a play by Alfred de Musset?—which you never gave me to read, by the way. Do you see those little Bohemian glass tumblers that I bought especially for to-night? We will drink each other's health in them."
"And his too, eh?"
"The heir's, you mean? Poor little love of an heir, I should think so! Then I shall hide the two glasses and bring them out again this day next year, eh, dear? They will be the Christmas-supper glasses, and we will have supper every year before the hearth, you and I alone, until our very old, old age."
"Yes; but when we shall have lost all our teeth—"
"Never mind; we shall have nice little soups, and it will none the less be very sweet. Another piece for me, please, with a little jelly, thank you."
As she held out her plate to me, I caught a glimpse of her arm, the pretty contours of which disappeared in the lace.
"What are you looking up my sleeve for instead of eating?"
"I am looking at your arm, dear. You are exquisitely pretty to-night; do you know it? Your hair is wonderfully becoming, and that gown—I had never seen that gown before."
"Dame! When a person starts out to make a conquest!"