While lisping this somewhat confused explanation, the Little Countess had an expression at once sly and embarrassed, which greatly fortified the sentiment of distrust which the awkwardness of her entrance had excited in my mind.

“Madam,” I said, “you really distress me.  I shall regret all my life to have missed the delightful occasion you are kind enough to offer me; but it is indispensable that to-morrow’s mail shall carry off this report, which the minister is expecting with extreme impatience.”

“You are afraid to lose your situation?”

“I have none to lose, madam.”

“Well, then, let the minister wait, for my sake; it will flatter me.”

“That is impossible, madam.”

She assumed a very dry tone: 

“But, that is really strange!  What! you are not more anxious to be agreeable to me?”

“Madam,” I replied rather dryly in my turn, “I should be extremely anxious to be agreeable to you, but I am not at all anxious to help you win your wager.”

I threw out that insinuation somewhat at random, resting it upon some recollections and some slight indications which you may have been able to collect here and there in the course of my narrative.  Nevertheless, I had hit it exactly.  Madame de Palme blushed up to her ear, stammered out two or three words which I failed to catch, and left the room, having lost all countenance.

This precipitate retreat left me quite confused myself.  I cannot admit that we should carry out our respect for the weaker sex so far as to lend ourselves to every caprice and every enterprise it may please a woman to direct against our peace or our dignity; but our right of legitimate self-defense in such encounters is circumscribed within narrow and delicate limits, which I feared I had over-stepped.  It was enough that Madame de Palme should be alone in the world, and without any other protection than her sex, to make it seem extremely painful to me to have thoughtlessly yielded to the irritation, just though it might be, which her impertinent insistence had aroused.  As I was endeavoring to establish between our respective wrongs a balance that might serve to quiet my scruples, there was another knock at the library-door.  This time, it was Madame de Malouet who came in.  She was much moved.

“Do tell me what has taken place,” she said.

I gave her full and minute particulars of my interview with Madame de Palme, and, while expressing much regret at my vivacity, I added that the lady’s conduct toward me was inexplicable; that she had taken me twice within twenty-four hours for the subject of her wagers, and that it was a great deal too much attention, on her part, for a man who asked her, as a sole favor, not to trouble herself about him any more than he troubled himself about her.

“Mon Dieu!” said the kind marquise, “I have no fault to find with you.  I have been able to appreciate with my own eyes, during the past few days, your conduct and her own.  But all this is very disagreeable.  That child has just thrown herself in my arms weeping terribly.  She says you have treated her like a creature—­”