"What money?" demanded Claire, for she no longer remembered why she had gone to Savigny.
"Hush! The funds to meet my note to-morrow. Monsieur Georges, when he went out, told me that you would hand it to me very soon."
"Ah! yes—true. The hundred thousand francs."
"I haven't them, Monsieur Planus; I haven't anything."
"Then," said the cashier, in a strange voice, as if he were speaking to himself, "then it means failure."
And he turned slowly away.
Failure! She sank on a chair, appalled, crushed. For the last few hours the downfall of her happiness had caused her to forget the downfall of the house; but she remembered now.
So her husband was ruined! In a little while, when he returned home, he would learn of the disaster, and he would learn at the same time that his wife and child had gone; that he was left alone in the midst of the wreck.
Alone—that weak, easily influenced creature, who could only weep and complain and shake his fist at life like a child! What would become of the miserable man?
She pitied him, notwithstanding his great sin.