'How can he do it? Keeping away from home all this time! My father wrote to me yesterday and told me that the remainder of our money would go the same way as the rest.'
Lazare had, indeed, allowed himself to be swindled in a couple of unfortunate speculations, and Pauline had become so anxious on the child's account that, as his godmother, she had made him a present of two-thirds of what she still possessed, taking out in his name a policy which would assure him a hundred thousand francs on the day he reached his majority. She now had only an income of five hundred francs herself, but her sole regret in the matter was the necessity she was under of curtailing her customary charities.
'A fine speculation that manure business is!' Louise continued. 'I am sure my father will have made him give it up, and he's only stopping away to amuse himself. Oh, well! I don't care! He may be as dissolute as he likes!'
'Then what are you getting so angry for?' Pauline retorted. 'But you know that's all nonsense; the poor fellow never thinks of anything wrong. Do hurry down, won't you? What can have happened to Véronique, I wonder, that she should disappear in this way on a Saturday, and leave me all her work to do?'
In fact, a most extraordinary thing had happened—one which had been puzzling the whole house since two o'clock. Véronique had prepared the vegetables for the stew, and plucked and trussed a duck; and then she had disappeared as suddenly and completely as if the earth had swallowed her up. Pauline, quite astounded by this sudden disappearance, had at last resolved to undertake the cooking of the stew herself.
'She hasn't come back, then?' asked Louise, recovering from her anger.
'No, indeed!' Pauline replied. 'Do you know what I am beginning to think? She bought the duck for forty sous of a woman who happened to be passing, and I remember telling her that I had seen much finer ones for thirty sous at Verchemont. She tossed her head directly, and gave me one of her surly looks. Well, I'll be bound that she has gone to Verchemont to see if I wasn't telling a lie.'
She smiled, but there was a touch of sadness in her smile, for the surliness which Véronique was again manifesting pained her. The servant's gradually increasing ill-will against Pauline since Madame Chanteau's death had now brought her back to the virulence of the very early days.
'We've none of us been able to get a word out of her for a week or more,' said Louise. 'Any sort of folly may be expected from a person with such a disposition.'
'Well,' said Pauline charitably, 'we must excuse her whims. She is sure to come back again, and we shan't die of hunger this time.'