M. Rodoin waited for the rattle of passing cabs to subside before he replied.
“I do not know.”
She started, flushing crimson. “Monsieur! you do not know!”
“Ah, madame, hear me patiently! I am sure that Monsieur de Beaudrillart repaid it—though I wish to Heaven he had insisted upon proper forms and claimed a receipt—but we must allow that it is quite possible that Monsieur Lemaire never heard of the repayment. He says he was told of the affair by the count; that I take leave to doubt, for it seems to me an extraordinary revengeful act for a dying man, after he had kept silence for six years, to put the reputation of his cousin at the mercy of another. I prefer to believe that Monsieur Lemaire contrived to ferret out some of the facts, and to jump at other conclusions. And I base my opinion a good deal upon what I have found out of the man’s life.”
“Yes! Pray go on,” said Nathalie, leaning forward, her eyes fixed upon him.
“He is a gambler, extravagant, worthless. His debts amount to a sum which his inheritance from Monsieur de Cadanet will hardly liquidate, and here you have a motive for the action. He is a neglectful husband—said by some to be absolutely unkind. Certainly his wife does not present the appearance of a very happy woman.”
“Might there not be something among Monsieur de Cadanet’s papers?”
“Monsieur Lemaire is executor,” returned the lawyer, significantly. “However, we shall not neglect any possibility.” She fell into a long silence, which he did not attempt to break. Among all the De Beaudrillarts, past and present, who had ever consulted him, he had met with none in whom he felt so deep an interest as in this young baroness. He had liked the honesty of her hazel eyes before, but the divine sympathy he read in them as she looked after her husband appealed more directly to his heart. Not for years had he felt sentiment so near gaining the upper hand.
“Madame,” he exclaimed at last, “surely your father would be an excellent person to have with you! Permit me to telegraph for him.”
She made a sign in the negative.