“Ah, then,” I continued calmly, “I fear me that Monsieur de Nolé de St. Pris will have to pay again.”
“But he won’t!” she now cried out in a voice broken with sobs, and incontinently once more saturated her gossamer handkerchief with her tears.
“Then I see nothing for it, Madame,” I rejoined, much against my will with a slight touch of impatience, “I see nothing for it but that yourself . . .”
“Ah! but, Monsieur,” she retorted, with a sigh that would have melted a heart of stone, “that is just my difficulty. I cannot pay . . .”
“Madame,” I protested.
“Oh! if I had money of my own,” she continued, with an adorable gesture of impatience, “I would not worry. Mais voilà: I have not a silver franc of my own to bless myself with. M. le Comte is over generous. He pays all my bills without a murmur—he pays my dressmaker, my furrier; he loads me with gifts and dispenses charity on a lavish scale in my name. I have horses, carriages, servants—everything I can possibly want and more, but I never have more than a few hundred francs to dispose of. Up to now I have never for a moment felt the want of money. To-day, when Carissimo is being lost to me, I feel the entire horror of my position.”
“But surely, Madame,” I urged, “M. le Comte . . .”
“No, Monsieur,” she replied. “M. le Comte has flatly refused this time to pay these abominable thieves for the recovery of Carissimo. He upbraids himself for having yielded to their demands on the three previous occasions. He calls these demands blackmailing, and vows that to give them money again is to encourage them in their nefarious practices. Oh! he has been cruel to me, cruel!—for the first time in my life, Monsieur, my husband has made me unhappy, and if I lose my darling now I shall indeed be broken-hearted.”
I was silent for a moment or two. I was beginning to wonder what part I should be expected to play in the tragedy which was being unfolded before me by this lovely and impecunious creature.
“Madame la Comtesse,” I suggested tentatively, after a while, “your jewellery . . . you must have a vast number which you seldom wear . . . five thousand francs is soon made up. . . .”