Imagining him
no better than he was, Climene had made him her own. And now she was
to receive the reward of disinterested affection.
Even old Binet's secret hostility towards Andre-Louis melted before
this astounding revelation. He had pinched his daughter's ear quite
playfully. "Ah, ah, trust you to have penetrated his disguise, my
child!"
She shrank resentfully from that implication.
"But I did not. I took him for what he seemed."
Her father winked at her very solemnly and laughed. "To be sure,
you did. But like your father, who was once a gentleman, and knows
the ways of gentlemen, you detected in him a subtle something
different from those with whom misfortune has compelled you hitherto
to herd. You knew as well as I did that he never caught that trick
of haughtiness, that grand air of command, in a lawyer's musty
office, and that his speech had hardly the ring or his thoughts the
complexion of the bourgeois that he pretended to be. And it was
shrewd of you to have made him yours. Do you know that I shall be
very proud of you yet, Climene?"
She moved away without answering.
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