"My thoughts are ill company, sir."
"Well, as it seems to me, the pretty child is out of temper to-day," he said, with evident chagrin.
"Perhaps I am—it is natural—I should be a fool were I otherwise."
"Par bleu! what new calamity is this?" he asked, with a smile and a shrug.
"Nothing new, sir."
"Well, what old calamity?"
The past night had wrought a change in Lucille; and, little as she had ever liked M. Le Prun, she now felt a positive hatred of him, and she answered with a gloomy sort of recklessness—
"Sir, I am a prisoner."
"Tut, tut! pretty rogue."
"Yes, a prisoner; your prisoner."