"I have leased for you a very good apartment not far from the Champs Elysées. I think you will find it comfortable."
For an instant the woman's eyes hardened.
"You appear to have taken matters rather much for granted, Carlos."
He shook his head and smiled.
"I merely hoped," he assured her.
CHAPTER XXIX
POSSIBLY some day a historian versed in the intricacies of high—and low—finance will record in detail, comprehensible and convincing to those who thirst for statistical minutiæ, the last chapters of Hamilton Burton's history. Here it will only be set baldly down that the weeks, for him, went galloping toward and over the brink of things—until he found his affairs still reckoned in many millions, but all in the millions of liabilities.
He was pointed out derisively in those expensive hotels where once every head had bowed obsequiously at his coming. Then one night he went to his office, carrying a leather portfolio in his hand. He still walked with his head up and met the eye of every man who cared to gaze into his own. About his neck was turned up the collar of a sable-lined overcoat—relic of his days of splendor. As he walked down-town he met no one who knew him, and this suited his plans. Lower Broadway after nightfall is as murky and silent as upper Broadway is aflare and noisy. The steep buildings are like cemetery shafts, save where belated clerks work over their books and night watchmen guard their posts.