His face still bore an
agitated expression.
He went straight into Valerie's room, who was having her hair dressed.
She looked at Crevel in her glass, and, like every woman of that sort,
was annoyed, before she knew anything about it, to see that he was
moved by some strong feeling of which she was not the cause.
"What is the matter, my dear?" said she. "Is that a face to bring in
to your little Duchess? I will not be your Duchess any more, monsieur,
no more than I will be your 'little duck,' you old monster."
Crevel replied by a melancholy smile and a glance at the maid.
"Reine, child, that will do for to-day; I can finish my hair myself.
Give me my Chinese wrapper; my gentleman seems to me out of sorts."
Reine, whose face was pitted like a colander, and who seemed to have
been made on purpose to wait on Valerie, smiled meaningly in reply,
and brought the dressing-gown. Valerie took off her combing-wrapper;
she was in her shift, and she wriggled into the dressing-gown like a
snake into a clump of grass.
"Madame is not at home?"
"What a question!" said Valerie.--"Come, tell me, my big puss, have
_Rives Gauches_ gone down?"
"No."
"They have raised the price of the house?"
"No."
"You fancy that you are not the father of our little Crevel?"
"What nonsense!" replied he, sure of his paternity.
"On my honor, I give it up!" said Madame Marneffe. "If I am expected
to extract my friend's woes as you pull the cork out of a bottle of
Bordeaux, I let it alone.
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