have thought me--a declaration which drew from Miss Bordereau another
of her whimsical speeches.

"She has very good manners; I bred her up myself!" I was on the point
of saying that that accounted for the easy grace of the niece, but I
arrested myself in time, and the next moment the old woman went on:
"I don't care who you may be--I don't want to know; it signifies very
little today." This had all the air of being a formula of dismissal,
as if her next words would be that I might take myself off now that she had
had the amusement of looking on the face of such a monster of indiscretion.
Therefore I was all the more surprised when she added, with her soft,
venerable quaver, "You may have as many rooms as you like--if you will
pay a good deal of money."

I hesitated but for a single instant, long enough to ask
myself what she meant in particular by this condition.
First it struck me that she must have really a large sum
in her mind; then I reasoned quickly that her idea of a large
sum would probably not correspond to my own. My deliberation,
I think, was not so visible as to diminish the promptitude
with which I replied, "I will pay with pleasure and of course
in advance whatever you may think is proper to ask me."

"Well then, a thousand francs a month," she rejoined instantly,
while her baffling green shade continued to cover her attitude.

The figure, as they say, was startling and my logic had been at fault.
The sum she had mentioned was, by the Venetian measure of such matters,
exceedingly large; there was many an old palace in an out-of-the-way
corner that I might on such terms have enjoyed by the year.