“I would give anything,” said he——
She loosened her clasp, thus eluding his touch, and moved a little aside. Madame Chauvet appeared from the kitchen passage, bearing a steaming cup.
“Ma pauvre petite,” she said, “I have brought you a cup of camomile tea. Drink it. It calms the nerves.”
Martin rose and the good lady took his seat and discoursed picturesquely upon her mother’s last illness, death and funeral, until Félise, notwithstanding the calming properties of the camomile tea, burst into tears and fled to her room.
“Poor little girl,” said Madame Chauvet, sympathetically. “I cried just like that. I remember it as if it were yesterday.”
The next day Bigourdin returned. He walked about expanding his chest with great draughts of air like the good provincial who had suffocated in the capital. He railed at the atmosphere, the fever, the cold-heartedness of Paris.
“One is much better here,” said he. “And we have made much further progress in civilisation. Even the Hôtel de la Dordogne has not yet a bathroom.”
He was closeted long with Félise, and afterwards came to Martin, great wrinkles of perturbation marking his forehead.
“She has been asking me questions which it has taken all my tact and diplomacy to answer. Mon Dieu, que j’ai menti! But I have convinced her that all we have done with regard to her mother has been right. I will tell you what I have said.”
“You had better not,” replied Martin, anxious to have no more embarrassing confidences; “the less I know, the simpler it is for me to plead ignorance when Félise questions me—not to say the more truthful.”