“And—do you know who that woman is?”
“No. But I can find out from the writer of the article in this paper, who says that he knows her. See!”
Mlle. Lucienne took the paper which Maxence was holding out to her: but she hardly condescended to look at it.
“But what’s your idea now?”
“I do not believe that my father is innocent; but I believe that there are people more guilty than he,—skillful and prudent knaves, who have made use of him as a man of straw,—villains who will quietly digest their share of the millions (the biggest one, of course), while he will be sent to prison.”
A fugitive blush colored Mlle. Lucienne’s cheeks.
“That being the case,” she interrupted, “what do you expect to do?”
“Avenge my father, if possible, and discover his accomplices, if he has any.”
She held out her hand to him.
“That’s right,” she said. “But how will you go about it?”