"Yes; that"s true, perhaps."
And she remained without speaking in the middle of the street, with vehicles all around her; then, fixing on him her wild-cat"s eyes:
"I may rely on you, may I not? There is now a sacred bond between us. Do what you say, then; we"ll talk about it to-morrow."
Frederick, in pa.s.sing through the lobby, heard two voices responding to one another.
Madame Arnoux"s voice was saying:
"Don"t lie! don"t lie, pray!"
He went in. The voices suddenly ceased.
Arnoux was walking from one end of the apartment to the other, and Madame was seated on the little chair near the fire, extremely pale and staring straight before her. Frederick stepped back, and was about to retire, when Arnoux grasped his hand, glad that some one had come to his rescue.
"But I am afraid----" said Frederick.
"Stay here, I beg of you!" he whispered in his ear.
Madame remarked:
"You must make some allowance for this scene, Monsieur Moreau. Such things sometimes unfortunately occur in households."
"They do when we introduce them there ourselves," said Arnoux in a jolly tone. "Women have crotchets, I a.s.sure you. This, for instance, is not a bad one--see! No; quite the contrary. Well, she has been amusing herself for the last hour by teasing me with a heap of idle stories."
"They are true," retorted Madame Arnoux, losing patience; "for, in fact, you bought it yourself."
"I?"
"Yes, you yourself, at the Persian House."
"The cashmere," thought Frederick.
He was filled with a consciousness of guilt, and got quite alarmed.
She quickly added:
"It was on Sat.u.r.day, the fourteenth."
"The fourteenth," said Arnoux, looking up, as if he were searching in his mind for a date.
"And, furthermore, the clerk who sold it to you was a fair-haired young man."
"How could I remember what sort of man the clerk was?"
"And yet it was at your dictation he wrote the address, 18 Rue de Laval."
"How do you know?" said Arnoux in amazement.
She shrugged her shoulders.
"Oh! "tis very simple: I went to get my cashmere altered, and the superintendent of the millinery department told me that they had just sent another of the same sort to Madame Arnoux."
"Is it my fault if there is a Madame Arnoux in the same street?"
"Yes; but not Jacques Arnoux," she returned.
Thereupon, he began to talk in an incoherent fashion, protesting that he was innocent. It was some misapprehension, some accident, one of those things that happen in some way that is utterly unaccountable. Men should not be condemned on mere suspicion, vague probabilities; and he referred to the case of the unfortunate Lesurques.
"In short, I say you are mistaken. Do you want me to take my oath on it?"
""Tis not worth while."
"Why?"
She looked him straight in the face without saying a word, then stretched out her hand, took down the little silver chest from the mantelpiece, and handed him a bill which was spread open.
Arnoux coloured up to his ears, and his swollen and distorted features betrayed his confusion.
"But," he said in faltering tones, "what does this prove?"
"Ah!" she said, with a peculiar ring in her voice, in which sorrow and irony were blended. "Ah!"
Arnoux held the bill in his hands, and turned it round without removing his eyes from it, as if he were going to find in it the solution of a great problem.
"Ah! yes, yes; I remember," said he at length. ""Twas a commission. You ought to know about that matter, Frederick." Frederick remained silent.
"A commission that Pere Oudry entrusted to me."
"And for whom?"
"For his mistress."
"For your own!" exclaimed Madame Arnoux, springing to her feet and standing erect before him.
"I swear to you!"
"Don"t begin over again. I know everything."
"Ha! quite right. So you"re spying on me!"
She returned coldly:
"Perhaps that wounds your delicacy?"
"Since you are in a pa.s.sion," said Arnoux, looking for his hat, "and can"t be reasoned with----"
Then, with a big sigh:
"Don"t marry, my poor friend, don"t, if you take my advice!"