While she worked, Emilie found her respect for her employer vanishing with the dirt she threw away. He might look prosperous, she thought, but he could not be much of a businessman to let his home get into this state. Used to speaking her mind, she said what she thought when Léon Bleuet returned for his midday meal, and soon she found herself giving him what she called a ‘talking to’ every time he was at home.

Surprisingly he made no attempt to stop her, in fact he seemed to enjoy her caustic comments, to delight in her barely concealed dislike, and he sought her society more and more.

When she first arrived, he was invariably out for dinner, but soon he began to dine at home, having his meal at an early hour because he said it was essential for him to be at his place of business not later than seven o’clock.

Emilie was not particularly curious as to what he did. So long as he paid her, she was not interested as to where the money came from or how it had been earned. When he told her the truth, she accepted the information with a shrug of her shoulders. It neither astounded her nor horrified her. While there were men in the world their tastes must be catered for, she supposed, although it did nothing to enhance her already very low opinion of the male sex.

Léon’s proposals which concerned herself came into a very different category.

‘It is no use you talking to me like that,’ she said. ‘I have got no use for men. I hate them! My father was an English nobleman and a lot of good he did my mother. I have never met a man I would give a snap of my fingers for, and I have been brought up to be respectable. I don’t intend to be anything else, and if that’s what you want, then I had better be looking for other employment.’

To her astonishment Léon Bleuet asked her to marry him. She was too astonished to blurt out an instantaneous refusal, and while she hesitated, he told her something which made her hesitate still further before giving him a definite answer. What he revealed in that moment was what he was worth.

She had not thought of him until then as a rich man, but even though he was by no means wealthy by some standards, to Emilie the value he placed on the various establishments he owned and the considerable sum to his credit at the bank seemed astronomical. His income for a week exceeded the sum they had managed to live on for a year at the farm in Brittany.