Flore stayed beside the old man, speaking tenderly and looking at him with much affection; she played the comedy so well that Philippe guessed some immediate danger, merely from the solicitude thus displayed in his presence.

Gilet, whose policy it was to avoid all collision with Philippe, did not appear.

After watching his uncle and Flore for a time with a discerning eye, the colonel judged that the time had come to strike his grand blow.
"Adieu, my dear uncle," he said, rising as if to leave the house.
"Oh! don't go yet," cried the old man, who was comforted by Flore's false tenderness.

"Dine with us, Philippe." "Yes, if you will come and take a walk with me." "Monsieur is very feeble," interposed Mademoiselle Brazier; "just now he was unwilling even to go out in the carriage," she added, turning upon the old man the fixed look with which keepers quell a maniac.
Philippe took Flore by the arm, compelling her to look at him, and looking at her in return as fixedly as she had just looked at her victim.
"Tell me, mademoiselle," he said, "is it a fact that my uncle is not free to take a walk with me ?" "Why, yes he is, monsieur," replied Flore, who was unable to make any other answer.
"Very well.

Come, uncle.