I should be delighted to see her again: she had been so very
courteous to me, considering how odd she must 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. But so far
as my small means allowed I was prepared to spend money, and my decision
was quickly taken. I would pay her with a smiling face what she asked,
but in that case I would give myself the compensation of extracting the
papers from her for nothing. Moreover if she had asked five times
as much I should have risen to the occasion; so odious would it have
appeared to me to stand chaffering with Aspern's Juliana. It was queer
enough to have a question of money with her at all. I assured her that
her views perfectly met my own and that on the morrow I should have the
pleasure of putting three months' rent into her hand. She received this
announcement with serenity and with no apparent sense that after al