“What do you hope for?”
He was laughing a stupid laugh.
“I? I shall go and hide myself in some suburb of Paris, and write to Affrays to come. She knows that I have twelve hundred thousand francs. She will come; and she will keep coming as long as I have any money. And when I have no more:—”
He stopped short, starting back, his arms outstretched as if to repel a terrifying apparition. Mlle. Gilberte had just appeared at the door.
“My daughter!” stammered the wretch. “Gilberte!”
“The Marquise de Tregars,” uttered Marius.
An inexpressible look of terror and anguish convulsed the features of Vincent Favoral: he guessed that it was the end.
“What do you want with me?” he stammered.
“The money that you have stolen, father,” replied the girl in an inexorable tone of voice,—“the twelve hundred thousand francs which you have here, then the proofs which are in your hands, and, finally your weapons.”
He was trembling from head to foot.