Mademoiselle de Varandeuil took off her spectacles. "I will pay," she said.
The concierge bowed. She glanced at him; he did not move.
"That is all, I hope?" she said, sharply.
The concierge had his eyes fixed on a leaf in the carpet. "That's all—unless——"
Mademoiselle de Varandeuil had the same feeling of terror as at the moment she passed through the door on whose other side she was to see her maid's dead body.
"But how does she owe all this?" she cried. "I paid her good wages, I almost clothed her. Where did her money go, eh?"
"Ah! there you are, mademoiselle. I should rather not have told you,—but as well to-day as to-morrow. And then, too, it's better that you should be warned; when you know beforehand you can arrange matters. There's an account with the poultry woman. The poor girl owed a little everywhere; she didn't keep things in very good shape these last few years. The laundress left her book the last time she came. It amounts to quite a little,—I don't know just how much. It seems there's a note at the grocer's—an old note—it goes back years. He'll bring you his book."
"How much at the grocer's?"
"Something like two hundred and fifty."
All these disclosures, falling upon Mademoiselle de Varandeuil, one after another, extorted exclamations of stupefied surprise from her. Resting her elbow on her pillow, she said nothing as the veil was torn away, bit by bit, from this life, as its shameful features were brought to light one by one.