At that same hour, Madame Desvarennes, tired by long waiting, was pacing up and down her little drawing-room.  A door opened and Marechal, the long-looked for messenger, appeared.  He had been to Cayrol’s, but could not see him.  The banker, who had shut himself up in his private office where he had worked all night, had given orders that no one should interrupt him.  And as Madame Desvarennes seemed to have a question on her lips which she dared not utter, Marechal added that nothing unusual seemed to have happened at the house.

But as the mistress was thanking her secretary, the great gate swung on its hinges, and a carriage rolled into the courtyard.  Marechal flew to the window, and uttered one word,

“Cayrol!”

Madame Desvarennes motioned to him to leave her, and the banker appeared on the threshold.

At a glance the mistress saw the ravages which the terrible night he had passed through had caused.  Yesterday, the banker was rosy, firm, and upright as an oak, now he was bent, and withered like an old man.  His hair had become gray about the temples, as if scorched by his burning thoughts.  He was only the shadow of himself.

Madame Desvarennes advanced toward him, and in one word asked a world of questions.

“Well?” she said.

Cayrol, gloomy and fierce, raised his eyes to the mistress, and answered: 

“Nothing!”

“Did he not come?”

“Yes, he came.  But I had not the necessary energy to kill him.  I thought it was an easier matter to become a murderer.  And you thought so too, eh?”

“Cayrol!” cried Madame Desvarennes, shuddering, and troubled to find that she had been so easily understood by him whom she had armed on her behalf.

“The opportunity was a rare one, though,” continued Cayrol, getting excited.  “Fancy; I found them together under my own roof.  The law allowed me, if not the actual right to kill them, at least an excuse if I did so.  Well, at the decisive moment, when I ought to have struck the blow, my heart failed me.  He lives, and Jeanne loves him.”

There was a pause.

“What are you going to do?”

“Get rid of him in another way,” answered Cayrol.  “I had only two ways of killing him.  One was to catch him in my own house, the other to call him out.  My will failed me in the one case; my want of skill would fail me in the other.  I will not fight Serge.  Not because I fear death, for my life is blighted, and I don’t value it; but if I were dead, Jeanne would belong to him, and I could not bear the thought of that even in death.  I must separate them forever.”

“And how?”

“By forcing him to disappear.”

“And if he refuse?”

Cayrol shook his head menacingly, and exclaimed: 

“I defy him!  If he resist, I will bring him before the assizes!”

“You?” said Madame Desvarennes, going nearer to Cayrol.