"My poor wife!" said Hulot. "For more than nine months I have given
her no money, though I find it for you, Valerie; but at what a cost!
No one else will ever love you so, and what torments you inflict on me
in return!"
"Torments?" she echoed. "Then what do you call happiness?"
"I do not yet know on what terms you have been with this so-called
cousin whom you never mentioned to me," said the Baron, paying no heed
to Valerie's interjection. "But when he came in I felt as if a
penknife had been stuck into my heart. Blinded I may be, but I am not
blind. I could read his eyes, and yours. In short, from under that
ape's eyelids there flashed sparks that he flung at you--and your
eyes!--Oh! you have never looked at me so, never! As to this mystery,
Valerie, it shall all be cleared up. You are the only woman who ever
made me know the meaning of jealousy, so you need not be surprised by
what I say.--But another mystery which has rent its cloud, and it
seems to me infamous----"
"Go on, go on," said Valerie.
"It is that Crevel, that square lump of flesh and stupidity, is in
love with you, and that you accept his attentions with so good a grace
that the idiot flaunts his passion before everybody.
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