"A good comrade?"

"That is just it; for I, you know, suffer hopelessly elsewhere."

"What, Lady Cynthia still?"

"Still!" echoed Gustave with a tragic air. But he recovered in a moment.
"Lady Cynthia being, however, in Switzerland, there is no reason why I
should not go to Normandy."

"Oh, Normandy?"

"Precisely. It is there that the duchess--"

"Oho! The duchess?"

"Is residing in retirement in a small _château_, alone save for my
sister's society."

"And a servant or two, I presume?"

"You are just right, a servant or two; for he is most stingy to her
(though not, they say, to everybody), and gives her nothing when he is
away."

"Money is a temptation, you see."

"_Mon Dieu_, to have none is a greater!" and Gustave shook his head
solemnly.