The next day Drouet called, but it was with no especial delight that Carrie remembered her appointment.  However, seeing him, handsome as ever, after his kind, and most genially disposed, her doubts as to whether the dinner would be disagreeable were swept away.  He talked as volubly as ever.

“They put on a lot of lugs here, don’t they?” was his first remark.

“Yes; they do,” said Carrie.

Genial egotist that he was, he went at once into a detailed account of his own career.

“I’m going to have a business of my own pretty soon,” he observed in one place.  “I can get backing for two hundred thousand dollars.”

Carrie listened most good-naturedly.

“Say,” he said, suddenly; “where is Hurstwood now?”

Carrie flushed a little.

“He’s here in New York, I guess,” she said.  “I haven’t seen him for some time.”

Drouet mused for a moment.  He had not been sure until now that the ex-manager was not an influential figure in the background.  He imagined not; but this assurance relieved him.  It must be that Carrie had got rid of him—­as well she ought, he thought.  “A man always makes a mistake when he does anything like that,” he observed.

“Like what?” said Carrie, unwitting of what was coming.

“Oh, you know,” and Drouet waved her intelligence, as it were, with his hand.

“No, I don’t,” she answered.  “What do you mean?”

“Why that affair in Chicago—­the time he left.”

“I don’t know what you are talking about,” said Carrie.  Could it be he would refer so rudely to Hurstwood’s flight with her?

“Oho!” said Drouet, incredulously.  “You knew he took ten thousand dollars with him when he left, didn’t you?”

“What!” said Carrie.  “You don’t mean to say he stole money, do you?”

“Why,” said Drouet, puzzled at her tone, “you knew that, didn’t you?”

“Why, no,” said Carrie.  “Of course I didn’t.”

“Well, that’s funny,” said Drouet.  “He did, you know.  It was in all the papers.”

“How much did you say he took?” said Carrie.

“Ten thousand dollars.  I heard he sent most of it back afterwards, though.”

Carrie looked vacantly at the richly carpeted floor.  A new light was shining upon all the years since her enforced flight.  She remembered now a hundred things that indicated as much.  She also imagined that he took it on her account.  Instead of hatred springing up there was a kind of sorrow generated.  Poor fellow!  What a thing to have had hanging over his head all the time.

At dinner Drouet, warmed up by eating and drinking and softened in mood, fancied he was winning Carrie to her old-time good-natured regard for him.  He began to imagine it would not be so difficult to enter into her life again, high as she was.  Ah, what a prize! he thought.  How beautiful, how elegant, how famous!  In her theatrical and Waldorf setting, Carrie was to him the all desirable.