“Why, yes, it is easy enough to see that all these people detest me.  They bear little Chebe a grudge because she has become Madame Risler Aine.  Heaven only knows all the outrageous things that are said about me!  And your cashier doesn’t keep his tongue in his pocket, I assure you.  What a spiteful fellow he is!”

These few words had their effect.  Risler, indignant, but too proud to complain, met coldness with coldness.  Those two honest men, each intensely distrustful of the other, could no longer meet without a painful sensation, so that, after a while, Risler ceased to go to the counting-room at all.  It was not difficult for him, as Fromont Jeune had charge of all financial matters.  His month’s allowance was carried to him on the thirtieth of each month.  This arrangement afforded Sidonie and Georges additional facilities, and opportunity for all sorts of underhand dealing.

She thereupon turned her attention to the completion of her programme of a life of luxury.  She lacked a country house.  In her heart she detested the trees, the fields, the country roads that cover you with dust.  “The most dismal things on earth,” she used to say.  But Claire Fromont passed the summer at Savigny.  As soon as the first fine days arrived, the trunks were packed and the curtains taken down on the floor below; and a great furniture van, with the little girl’s blue bassinet rocking on top, set off for the grandfather’s chateau.  Then, one morning, the mother, grandmother, child, and nurse, a medley of white gowns and light veils, would drive away behind two fast horses toward the sunny lawns and the pleasant shade of the avenues.

At that season Paris was ugly, depopulated; and although Sidonie loved it even in the summer, which heats it like a furnace, it troubled her to think that all the fashion and wealth of Paris were driving by the seashore under their light umbrellas, and would make their outing an excuse for a thousand new inventions, for original styles of the most risque sort, which would permit one to show that one has a pretty ankle and long, curly chestnut hair of one’s own.

The seashore bathing resorts!  She could not think of them; Risler could not leave Paris.

How about buying a country house?  They had not the means.  To be sure, there was the lover, who would have asked nothing better than to gratify this latest whim; but a country house cannot be concealed like a bracelet or a shawl.  The husband must be induced to accept it.  That was not an easy matter; however, they might venture to try it with Risler.

To pave the way, she talked to him incessantly about a little nook in the country, not too expensive, very near Paris.  Risler listened with a smile.  He thought of the high grass, of the orchard filled with fine fruit-trees, being already tormented by the longing to possess which comes with wealth; but, as he was prudent, he said: 

“We will see, we will see.  Let us wait till the end of the year.”