"He knows, he knows! When a man travels so much, he can easily forget. It's after eight o'clock, and you see he doesn't come." "Eight o'clock isn't late. Never fear; he'll come." "You think so?" "Oh! I am sure of it." "You are quite sure that he still loves me?" "If he doesn't, why should he have told me that he did?" "Oh! my dear, men say so many things that they don't think!" "I can't understand how anyone can lie about love." "Ah! you make me laugh; love's just the thing they lie most about.--There's the bell. This time it must be he." Fanny's expectation was deceived once more; Monsieur Batonnin appeared, with his inevitable smile, and his measured words. "What a bore!" muttered the young woman, moving uneasily on her chair; "it's that wretched Batonnin--the doll-faced man, as we used to call him at our parties." "Don't you like him? Why, he used to go to your house----" "Well! what does that prove? Do you imagine that, in society, we are fond of everybody we receive? On the contrary, three-quarters of the time the greatest pleasure we have is in passing all our guests in review and picking them to pieces." "Ah! what a pitiful sort of pleasure! But whom can you share it with? for, if you speak ill of everybody----" "You take a new-comer, and go and sit down with him in a corner of the salon; and there, on the pretext of telling him who people are, you give everybody a curry-combing. It's awfully amusing!" "But the new-comer, if he isn't an idiot, must say to himself: 'As soon as I have gone, she'll say as much about me.'" "Oh! we don't even wait till he's gone to do that." Monsieur Batonnin, having paid his respects to Monsieur Gerbault and to the card-players, joined the two sisters. "How are the charming widow and her lovely sister? The rose and the bud--or, rather, two buds--or two roses; for, both being flowers, and the flowers being sisters, and having thorns--why----" "Come, Monsieur Batonnin, make up your mind. I want to know whether I am a rose or a bud," said Fanny, glancing at the guest with a mocking expression. "Madame, being no longer unmarried, you are necessarily a rose." "All right; that fixes my status! And my sister is a bud?" "Yes, to be sure--but I am pained to observe that this charming bud has drooped a little on its stalk for some time past." "Do you hear, Adolphine? Monsieur Batonnin thinks that you are drooping on your stalk, which means, I presume, that you are losing your freshness." "That isn't exactly what I meant to say." "Don't try to back down, Monsieur Batonnin; besides, you are right; my sister has changed of late. She assures us that she is not ill, that she has no pain; for my part, I am convinced that something is the matter, but she doesn't choose to make me her confidante." "Because I have nothing to confide," rejoined Adolphine, in a grave tone; "and it seems to me that monsieur might very well have avoided this subject."