“Is it possible?”

“It is so.  She was a good girl; and we won’t soon find one like her.”

The old man seemed distressed.

“Bad luck!” he growled.  “I would have liked that house myself.”

“Oh, I dare say you would!”

“And there is no way to get in?”

“Can’t tell.  It will be well to see the others, those who have bought.  But I mistrust them:  they look too stupid not to be mean.”

Listening intently to the conversation of these two men, it was mechanically and at random that M. de Tregars and Maxence threw their cards on the table, and uttered the common terms of the game of piquet,

“Five cards!  Tierce, major!  Three aces.”

Meantime the old man was going on,

“Who knows but what M. Vincent may come back?”

“No danger of that!”

“Why?”

The other looked carefully around, and, seeing only two players absorbed in their game,

“Because,” he replied, “M.  Vincent is completely ruined, it seems.  He spent all his money, and a good deal of other people’s money besides.  Amanda, the chambermaid, told me; and I guess she knows.”

“You thought he was so rich!”

“He was.  But no matter how big a bag is:  if you keep taking out of it, you must get to the bottom.”

“Then he spent a great deal?”

“It’s incredible!  I have been in extravagant houses; but nowhere have I ever seen money fly as it has during the five months that I have been in that house.  A regular pillage!  Everybody helped themselves; and what was not in the house, they could get from the tradespeople, have it charged on the bill; and it was all paid without a word.”

“Then, yes, indeed, the money must have gone pretty lively,” said the old one in a convinced tone.

“Well,” replied the other, “that was nothing yet.  Amanda the chambermaid who has been in the house fifteen years, told us some stories that would make you jump.  She was not much for spending, Zelie; but some of the others, it seems . . .”

It required the greatest effort on the part of Maxence and M. de Tregars not to play, but only to pretend to play, and to continue to count imaginary points,—­“One, two, three, four.”

Fortunately the coachman with the red nose seemed much interested.

“What others?” he asked.

“That I don’t know any thing about,” replied the younger valet.  “But you may imagine that there must have been more than one in that little house during the many years that M. Vincent owned it,—­a man who hadn’t his equal for women, and who was worth millions.”

“And what was his business?”

“Don’t know that, either.”

“What! there were ten of you in the house, and you didn’t know the profession of the man who paid you all?”

“We were all new.”

“The chambermaid, Amanda, must have known.”