This conversation to a certain degree comforted M. Bourget, since it proved to him that M. Georges, at any rate, had no suspicions, and had accepted the De Cadanet loan as a matter of history. He felt very tired, owing no doubt to the unusual emotions which had been at work ever since he received his daughter’s letter, and he thought it advisable to report himself to Fanchon, who was naturally in a state of uneasiness at his sudden departure. He stopped her reproaches, however, abruptly, with an air of ill-temper which reduced her to silence, and sat down in his own room, desiring that he might be left in peace and not pestered with questions. Fanchon retired grumbling; but when M. Bourget was in this humour it was not safe to cross him, and she was obliged to satisfy her curiosity with such poor fare as could be supplied by her own imagination.
But, although M. Bourget lingered a little while with satisfaction on the thought that he had perhaps been mistaken in imagining that Tours was already greedily discussing the crime of M. de Beaudrillart, he soon came back to the conviction that M. de Beaudrillart was guilty. What M. Georges had said threw no fresh light upon the transaction. He believed what he had been told, and what no doubt the whole family at Poissy had believed. Only the young baron knew if any dark secret was connected with the money which had been procured so fortunately at the time of his greatest need. If it were so, circumstances had no doubt thrown the knowledge into the hands of a man—perhaps already an enemy—who had no scruple in using it for his own ends.
But what had Léon done with the money which he had ostensibly applied to the payment of the debt? M. Bourget groaned again over his own conviction, and wiped his forehead.
“It has gone as hush-money. This Lemaire has not waited six years without putting on the screw. No doubt Baron Léon kept it to hand over in instalments when matters grew desperate. Lemaire has had the last of it, and now advances more boldly. Yes, that is it. I understand perfectly. But what is to be done?”
Chapter Fifteen.
In Paris.
Meanwhile, with father and mother torn by a hundred miserable fears at home, it may be supposed that, in Paris, the wife’s trouble was greater. Nothing of the sort. Nathalie was worried, because Léon was so evidently uneasy; but not a shadow of doubt had touched her mind, and she was not really unhappy. Never before had she lived alone with her husband, or found herself in an atmosphere free from chilly slights. All that she saw and heard about her interested her. Her intellect, freed from vexing cramps, leaped to its kingdom. Léon looked, listened in wonder. If only Raoul had been there!
And in Léon’s nature there was nothing of the moroseness which is angry because its own wretchedness is not shared. Sometimes, often even, he was miserably depressed, but at such times he really preferred that Nathalie should refuse to see reason for his low spirits, should indeed persist in ignoring them. She treated the whole affair as a malicious attempt to extort money, to which her husband should not yield for a moment.