"Are you perfectly certain?"
"Not a doubt of it!"
Frederick solemnly declared on his word of honour that he had never bestowed a thought on Madame Arnoux, as he was too much in love with another woman.
"Why, with you, my beautiful one!"
"Ah! don't laugh at me! You only annoy me!"
He thought it a prudent course to invent a story—to pretend that he was swayed by a passion. He manufactured some circumstantial details. This woman, however, had rendered him very unhappy.
"Decidedly, you have not been lucky," said Rosanette.
"Oh! oh! I may have been!" wishing to convey in this way that he had been often fortunate in his love-affairs, so that she might have a better opinion of him, just as Rosanette did not avow how many lovers she had had, in order that he might have more respect for her—
