He prefers the squalid sluts he picks up at the
street corners, and leaves me free. Though he keeps all his salary to
himself, he never asks me where I get money to live on----"
And she in her turn stopped short, as a woman does who feels herself
carried away by the torrent of her confessions; struck, too, by
Lisbeth's eager attention, she thought well to make sure of Lisbeth
before revealing her last secrets.
"You see, dear child, how entire is my confidence in you!" she
presently added, to which Lisbeth replied by a most comforting nod.
An oath may be taken by a look and a nod more solemnly than in a court
of justice.
"I keep up every appearance of respectability," Valerie went on,
laying her hand on Lisbeth's as if to accept her pledge. "I am a
married woman, and my own mistress, to such a degree, that in the
morning, when Marneffe sets out for the office, if he takes it into
his head to say good-bye and finds my door locked, he goes off without
a word. He cares less for his boy than I care for one of the marble
children that play at the feet of one of the river-gods in the
Tuileries. If I do not come home to dinner, he dines quite contentedly
with the maid, for the maid is devoted to monsieur; and he goes out
every evening after dinner, and does not come in till twelve or one
o'clock.
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