The cashier of the Mutual Credit shook his head.  “Do you suppose, then, that I have not questioned him?  I found his letter this morning at the office.  At once I ran to his apartments, Rue Vivienne.  He had just gone out; and it is in vain that I called for him at Jottras’, and at the office of ‘The Financial Pilot.’  I found him at last at the bourse, after running three hours.  But I could only get from him evasive answers and vague explanations.  Of course he did not fail to say, that, if he does withdraw, it is because he despairs of ever succeeding in pleasing Gilberte.  But it isn’t so:  I know it; I am sure of it; I read it in his eyes.  Twice his lips moved as if he were about to confess all; and then he said nothing.  And the more I insisted, the more he seemed ill at ease, embarrassed, uneasy, troubled, the more he appeared to me like a man who has been threatened, and dares not brave the threat.”

He directed upon his children one of those obstinate looks which search the inmost depths of the conscience.

“If you have done any thing to drive him off,” he resumed, “confess it frankly, and I swear I will not reproach you.”

“We did not.”

“You did not threaten him?”

“No!”

M. Favoral seemed appalled.

“Doubtless you deceive me,” he said, “and I hope you do.  Unhappy children! you do not know what this rupture may cost you.”

And, instead of returning to his office, he shut himself up in that little room which he called his study, and only came out of it at about five o’clock, holding under his arm an enormous bundle of papers, and saying that it was useless to wait for him for dinner, as he would not come home until late in the night, if he came home at all, being compelled to make up for his lost day.

“What is the matter with your father, my poor children?” exclaimed Mme. Favoral.  “I have never seen him in such a state.”

“Doubtless,” replied Maxence, “the rupture with Costeclar is going to break up some combination.”

But that explanation did not satisfy him any more than it did his mother.  He, too, felt a vague apprehension of some impending misfortune.  But what?  He had nothing upon which to base his conjectures.  He knew nothing, any more than his mother, of his father’s affairs, of his relations, of his interests, or even of his life, outside the house.

And mother and son lost themselves in suppositions as vain as if they had tried to find the solution of a problem, without possessing its terms.

With a single word Mlle. Gilberte thought she might have enlightened them.

In the unerring certainty of the blow, in the crushing promptness of the result, she thought she could recognize the hand of Marius de Tregars.

She recognized the hand of the man who acts, and does not talk.  And the girl’s pride felt flattered by this victory, by this proof of the powerful energy of the man whom, unknown to all, she had selected.  She liked to imagine Marius de Tregars and M. Costeclar in presence of each other,—­the one as imperious and haughty as she had seen him meek and trembling; the other more humble still than he was arrogant with her.