"Come, Monsieur de Raincy, we must stand to our guns; we are playing against three."
Adolphine left the piano and sat down beside her sister.
"I am sure that you are annoyed, Fanny, because your husband doesn't come home."
"I? Mon Dieu! I wasn't thinking about him at all. If he stays away, it is probably because he has business to attend to. You don't understand business, you see, Adolphine; you don't know that, if you want to make a lot of money, you must sometimes deprive yourself of a little pleasure."
"No, it's true, I don't understand money matters; but I thought that two people just married could not be happy apart, that they must be horribly bored when they're not together."
"Oh! my dear girl, there's reason in everything. And then, we have plenty of time to be together."
"Still, when you marry for love--and Monsieur Monléard certainly seemed to be in love with you---- Is that all over already?"
"Why--no--but when two people are once married, they're no longer like two lovers. You'll find that out some day, my little sister! I still call you little, although you're taller than I."
"Ah! I know that I could never love as placidly as you do!--I was afraid that your husband might be angry with you on account of that duel."
"Auguste has too much good sense and breeding to charge me with the folly and extravagance of another, as a crime. It's not my fault that another man was in love with me!"
"Oh! that poor Gustave! He did love you so dearly!"
"Oh, yes! I advise you to pity him! He behaved nobly, didn't he? To go shouting jeremiads in the street, and end by sending someone to fight in his place! Fie! it was shameful!"
"Fanny, you judge Gustave too harshly; do you impute it to him as a crime, that he didn't insult your husband? Oh! he probably would have done it, if his uncle hadn't dragged him away, almost by force, from that restaurant, where he absolutely insisted on speaking to you."
"Because it was I who sent word to Monsieur Grandcourt that his nephew was at the restaurant where the wedding was being celebrated."
"Oh! yes, so you told me. That fellow wanted to make a scene--and by what right? Was I obliged to marry him, I should like to know?"
"You allowed him to believe that you loved him."