“Enough allusions,” she said:  “let us speak frankly, and face to face now.  What do you want?”

But the change was too sudden not to arouse Marius’s suspicions.

“I want a great many things,” he replied.

“Still you must specify.”

“Well, I claim first the five hundred thousand francs which my father had settled upon his daughter,—­the daughter whom you cast off.”

“And what next?”

“I want besides, my own and my father’s fortune, of which we have been robbed by M. de Thaller, with your assistance, madame.”

“Is that all, at least?”

M. de Tregars shook his head.

“That’s nothing yet,” he replied.

“Oh!”

“We have now to say something of Vincent Favoral’s affairs.”

An attorney who is defending the interests of a client is neither calmer nor cooler than Mme. de Thaller at this moment.

“Do the affairs of my husband’s cashier concern me, then?” she said with a shade of irony.

“Yes, madame, very much.”

“I am glad to hear it.”

“I know it from excellent sources, because, on my return from
Louveciennes, I called in the Rue du Cirque, where I saw one Zelie
Cadelle.”

He thought that the baroness would at least start on hearing that name.  Not at all.  With a look of profound astonishment,

“Rue du Cirque,” she repeated, like a person who is making a prodigious effort of memory,—­“Rue du Cirque!  Zelie Cadelle!  Really, I do not understand.”

But, from the glance which M. de Tregars cast upon her, she must have understood that she would not easily draw from him the particulars which he had resolved not to tell.

“I believe, on the contrary,” he uttered, “that you understand perfectly.”

“Be it so, if you insist upon it.  What do you ask for Favoral?”

“I demand, not for Favoral, but for the stockholders who have been impudently defrauded, the twelve millions which are missing from the funds of the Mutual Credit.”

Mme. de Thaller burst out laughing.

“Only that?” she said.

“Yes, only that!”

“Well, then, it seems to me that you should present your reclamations to M. Favoral himself.  You have the right to run after him.”

“It is useless, for the reason that it is not he, the poor fool! who has carried off the twelve millions.”

“Who is it, then?”

“M. le Baron de Thaller, no doubt.”

With that accent of pity which one takes to reply to an absurd proposition,—­“You are mad, my poor marquis,” said Mme. de Thaller.

“You do not think so.”

“But suppose I should refuse to do any thing more?”

He fixed upon her a glance in which she could read an irrevocable determination; and slowly,

“I have a perfect horror of scandal,” he replied, “and, as you perceive, I am trying to arrange every thing quietly between us.  But, if I do not succeed thus, I must appeal to the courts.”