“And yet it must be,” declared M. de Thaller. “It is the only, the last resource.”
“And suppose I will not!”
“Your will has nothing to do with it now. It is twenty years ago that you might have willed, or not willed. But listen to me, and let us reason a little.”
Here M. de Thaller dropped his voice; and for some minutes nothing was heard in the dining-room, except confused words, and incomprehensible exclamations, until suddenly,
“That is ruin,” he resumed in a furious tone: “it is bankruptcy on the last of the month.”
“Sir,” the cashier was replying,—“sir!”
“You are a forger, M. Vincent Favoral; you are a thief!”
Maxence leaped from his seat.
“I shall not permit my father to be thus insulted in his own house,” he exclaimed.
“Maxence,” begged Mme. Favoral, “my son!”