Instinctively the clerk unloosed his cravat.  The struggle within him, no doubt, was terrible.  He was stifled.

“Twenty thousand francs!” he said in a hoarse voice.

“Is it not enough?” asked the young girl.  “Yes, you are right:  it is very little.  But I have as much again for you, twice as much.”

With haggard eyes, Mechinet had approached the table, and was convulsively handling the pile of papers, while he repeated,—­

“Twenty thousand francs!  A thousand a year!”

“No, double that much, and moreover, our gratitude, our devoted friendship, all the influence of the two families of Boiscoran and Chandore; in a word, fortune, position, respect.”

But by this time, thanks to a supreme effort of will, the clerk had recovered his self-control.

“No more, madam, say no more!”

And with a determined, though still trembling voice, he went on,—­

“Take your money back again, madam.  If I were to do what you want me to do, if I were to betray my duty for money, I should be the meanest of men.  If, on the other hand, I am actuated only by a sincere conviction and an interest in the truth, I may be looked upon as a fool; but I shall always be worthy of the esteem of honorable men.  Take back that fortune, madam, which has made an honest man waver for a moment in his conscience.  I will do what you ask, but for nothing.”

If grandpapa was getting tired of walking up and down in the Square, the sisters of Mechinet found time pass still more slowly in their workroom.  They asked each other,—­

“What can Miss Dionysia have to say to brother?”

At the end of ten minutes, their curiosity, stimulated by the most absurd suppositions, had become such martyrdom to them, that they made up their minds to knock at the clerk’s door.

“Ah, leave me alone!” he cried out, angry at being thus interrupted.  But then he considered a moment, opened hastily, and said quite gently,—­

“Go back to your room, my dear sisters, and, if you wish to spare me a very serious embarrassment, never tell anybody in this world that Miss Chandore has had a conversation with me.”

Trained to obey, the two sisters went back, but not so promptly that they should have not seen the bonds which Dionysia had thrown upon the table, and which were quite familiar in their appearance to them, as they had once owned some of them themselves.  Their burning desire to know was thus combined with vague terror; and, when they got back to their room, the younger asked,—­

“Did you see?”

“Yes, those bonds,” replied the other.

“There must have been five or six hundred.”

“Even more, perhaps.”

“That is to say, a very big sum of money.”

“An enormous one.”

“What can that mean, Holy Virgin!  And what have we to expect?”

“And brother asking us to keep his secret!”