“I could sleep in the cellar for a night. Leave it to me. They shall pay through the nose.”
He turned to the man.
“Fifty francs each for the night. That will be three hundred and fifty francs.”
The white, flaccid faces of the women showed a first flicker of animation.
“Fifty francs each!”
“But it’s outrageous! We paid half that at Amiens for the whole day.”
“But think of the rate of exchange,” said Brent; “and this is not Amiens.”
The man looked uncomfortable. He was not so hard as his satiated women—and France had filled him with vague qualms.
“Harriet, you know, these people have suffered a lot.”
His wife looked at him with oblique contempt.