"Oh! nothing that would interest you," replied his wife.
Monsieur de Listomere tranquilly returned to the reading of his paper,
and presently said:--
"Ah! Madame de Mortsauf is dead; your poor brother has, no doubt, gone
to Clochegourde."
"Are you aware, monsieur," resumed the marquise, turning to Eugene,
"that what you have just said is a great impertinence?"
"If I did not know the strictness of your principles," he answered,
naively, "I should think that you wished either to give me ideas which
I deny myself, or else to tear a secret from me. But perhaps you are
only amusing yourself with me."
The marquise smiled. That smile annoyed Eugene.
"Madame," he said, "can you still believe in an offence I have not
committed? I earnestly hope that chance may not enable you to discover
the name of the person who ought to have read that letter."
"What! can it be _still_ Madame de Nucingen?" cried Madame de Listomere,
more eager to penetrate that secret than to revenge herself for the
impertinence of the young man's speeches.
Eugene colored. A man must be more than twenty-five years of age not
to blush at being taxed with a fidelity that women laugh at--in order,
perhaps, not to show that they envy it. However, he replied with
tolerable self-possession:--
"Why not, madame?"
Such are the blunders we all make at twenty-five.
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