"She told me it was a lady and her daughter, about whom she had her doubts."
"What doubts?—that they were disreputable people?"
"Bah!—that they were beggars!"
"Then why don't the landlord get rid of them?"
"How can he?—they pay their rent."
"Then what did she want you to find out?"
"How the young lady employs herself of a morning, and why the mamma did not choose to receive the visits of that excellent man Monsieur le Baron de Boncœur."
"Is the first-floor made a baron?"
"To be sure he is!—everybody is made something now-a-days. If you had the spirit of a mouse, you would call yourself the Chevalier de Georges."
"I have the spirit of a mouse, which is to 'ware trap!" chuckled the dilapidated croupier. "I had a little adventure one season at Bagnères de Bigorre, under the name of the Chevalier St. Georges, which the police may not happen to have forgotten. But to return to the banker: what can he have in view by visiting a couple of beggarly women on a third-floor above the entresol?"