“And would you have said as much, monsieur,” asked Madame Hulot, looking Crevel steadily in the face, “if I had been false to my duty?”

“I should not be in a position to say it, dearest Adeline,” cried this singular adorer, interrupting the Baroness, “for you would have found the amount in my pocket-book.”

And adding action to word, the fat guardsman knelt down on one knee and kissed Madame Hulot’s hand, seeing that his speech had filled her with speechless horror, which he took for hesitancy.

“What, buy my daughter’s fortune at the cost of——?  Rise, monsieur —­or I ring the bell.”

Crevel rose with great difficulty.  This fact made him so furious that he again struck his favorite attitude.  Most men have some habitual position by which they fancy that they show to the best advantage the good points bestowed on them by nature.  This attitude in Crevel consisted in crossing his arms like Napoleon, his head showing three-quarters face, and his eyes fixed on the horizon, as the painter has shown the Emperor in his portrait.

“To be faithful,” he began, with well-acted indignation, “so faithful to a liber——­”

“To a husband who is worthy of such fidelity,” Madame Hulot put in, to hinder Crevel from saying a word she did not choose to hear.

“Come, madame; you wrote to bid me here, you ask the reasons for my conduct, you drive me to extremities with your imperial airs, your scorn, and your contempt!  Any one might think I was a Negro.  But I repeat it, and you may believe me, I have a right to—­to make love to you, for——­ But no; I love you well enough to hold my tongue.”

“You may speak, monsieur.  In a few days I shall be eight-and-forty; I am no prude; I can hear whatever you can say.”

“Then will you give me your word of honor as an honest woman—­for you are, alas for me! an honest woman—­never to mention my name or to say that it was I who betrayed the secret?”

“If that is the condition on which you speak, I will swear never to tell any one from whom I heard the horrors you propose to tell me, not even my husband.”

“I should think not indeed, for only you and he are concerned.”

Madame Hulot turned pale.

“Oh, if you still really love Hulot, it will distress you.  Shall I say no more?”

“Speak, monsieur; for by your account you wish to justify in my eyes the extraordinary declarations you have chosen to make me, and your persistency in tormenting a woman of my age, whose only wish is to see her daughter married, and then—­to die in peace——­”

“You see; you are unhappy.”

“I, monsieur?”

“Yes, beautiful, noble creature!” cried Crevel.  “You have indeed been too wretched!”

“Monsieur, be silent and go—­or speak to me as you ought.”

“Do you know, madame, how Master Hulot and I first made acquaintance?  —­At our mistresses’, madame.”