"What are you talking about?" Valerie asked, joining Lisbeth.--"Give
us tea, Cousin."

Steinbock, with Polish vainglory, wanted to appear familiar with this
drawing-room fairy. After defying Stidmann, Vignon, and Crevel with a
look, he took Valerie's hand and forced her to sit down by him on the
settee.

"You are rather too lordly, Count Steinbock," said she, resisting a
little. But she laughed as she dropped on to the seat, not without
arranging the rosebud pinned into her bodice.

"Alas! if I were really lordly," said he, "I should not be here to
borrow money."

"Poor boy! I remember how you worked all night in the Rue du Doyenne.
You really were rather a spooney; you married as a starving man
snatches a loaf. You knew nothing of Paris, and you see where you are
landed. But you turned a deaf ear to Lisbeth's devotion, as you did to
the love of a woman who knows her Paris by heart."

"Say no more!" cried Steinbock; "I am done for!"

"You shall have your ten thousand francs, my dear Wenceslas; but on
one condition," she went on, playing with his handsome curls.

"What is that?"

"I will take no interest----"