“_Les honnêtes femmes! Les honnêtes femmes!_” he said once to a friend. “_Ah mon cher, il n’y qu’elles pour canaille!_” But it was rarely he was so indiscreet as this, though he knew so many of the passions and pains which throbbed under the diamond tiaras and the sapphire _rivières_ in the brains and in the breasts of his fair clients. Now and then Beaumont went to the opera, or to the Français on a Tuesday, and from his modest stall looked up at his patrician patronesses in all the beauty of their semi-nudity, their admirable _maquillage_, their wondrous toilettes, and then he smiled as he lowered his glasses with a little malice but more indulgence. To Mouse, of course, Beaumont was well known: when she had wanted this large sum he had taken it from his capital for her, but as security he would accept in return nothing less than the famous Otterbourne jewel. “You have it. Bring it me,” he said as simply as if he had been speaking of a bit of cornelian or agate. In vain she implored, protested, entreated, wept, tried all the armory of persuasion, represented that he was tempting her to a crime, actually to a crime! “Ah, no, madame,” said Beaumont very gently, “I tempt you to nothing. I would rather keep my three hundred thousand francs in the Bank of France. I do not wish for your diamond at all. Only if there be any question of this loan, that is the only security I can take for it. Whether you like these terms or not is nothing to me; they are mine, and I cannot change them. The affair will oblige you, madame, not me.” Beaumont was not an unkind man; more than one young actress had owed her prosperity to him, more than one honorable family had been saved from ruin by his assistance; but to women like Mouse he was inflexible, he had not a shred of compassion for their troubles, and never believed a word they spoke; he dealt with them harshly and obstinately; he despised them from the depths of his soul, the pretty creatures, who sipped his iced mocha, and broke off the buds of his Malmaison roses.