e?" asked Carabine, nipping Cydalise's arm.

"She is worth all she can get," said the old woman. "The point is that
she can find a buyer."

"Listen!" cried Montes, fully aware at last of this masterpiece of
womankind "you will show me Valerie--"

"And Count Steinbock.--Certainly!" said Madame Nourrisson.

For the past ten minutes the old woman had been watching the Brazilian;
she saw that he was an instrument tuned up to the murderous pitch she
needed; and, above all, so effectually blinded, that he would never heed
who had led him on to it, and she spoke:--

"Cydalise, my Brazilian jewel, is my niece, so her concerns are partly
mine. All this catastrophe will be the work of a few minutes, for a
friend of mine lets the furnished room to Count Steinbock where Valerie
is at this moment taking coffee--a queer sort of coffee, but she calls
it her coffee. So let us understand each other, Brazil!--I like Brazil,
it is a hot country.--What is to become of my niece?"

"You old ostrich," said Montes, the plumes in the woman's bonnet
catching his eye, "you interrupted me.--If you show me--if I see Valerie
and that artist together--"

"As you would wish to be--" said Carabine; "that is understood."

"Then I will take this girl and carry her away--"

"Where?" asked Carabine.

"To Brazil," replied the Baron. "I will make her my wife. My uncle left
me ten leagues square of entailed estate; that is how I still have
that house and home. I have a hundred negroes--nothing but negroes and
negresses and negro brats, all bought by my uncle--"

"Nephew to a nigger-driver," said Carabine, with a grimace. "That needs
some consideration.--Cydalise, child, are you fond of the blacks?"

"Pooh! Carabine, no nonsense," said the old woman. "The deuce is in it!
Monsieur and I are doing business."

"If I take up another Frenchwoman, I mean to have her to myself," the
Brazilian went on. "I warn you, mademoiselle, I am king there, and not a
constitutional king. I am Czar; my subjects are mine by purchase, and
no one can escape from my kingdom, which is a hundred leagues from any
human settlement, hemmed in by savages on the interior, and divided from
the sea by a wilderness as wide as France."

"I should prefer a garret here."

"So thought I," said Montes, "since I sold all my land and possessions
at Rio to come back to Madame Marneffe."

"A man does not make such a voyage for nothing," remarked Madame
Nourrisson. "You have a right to