And, as her daughter said nothing:
“God alone knows what may happen!” sighed the poor woman.
Nothing happened, but what could have been easily foreseen. When M. Favoral came home to dinner, he was whistling a perfect storm on the stairs. He abstained at first from all recrimination; but towards the end of the meal, with the most sarcastic look he could assume:
“It seems,” he said to his daughter, “that you were unwell this afternoon?”
Bravely, and without flinching, she sustained his look; and, in a firm voice:
“I shall always be indisposed,” she replied, “when M. Costeclar calls. You hear me, don’t you, father—always!”
But the cashier of the Credit Mutual was not one of those men whose wrath finds vent in mere sarcasms. Rising suddenly to his feet:
“By the holy heavens!” he screamed forth, “you are wrong to trifle thus with my will; for, all of you here, I shall crush you as I do this glass.”
And, with a frenzied gesture, he dashed the glass he held in his hand against the wall, where it broke in a thousand pieces. Trembling like a leaf, Mme. Favoral staggered upon her chair.