“Oddly enough, there he goes,” said the lawyer. She bent forward eagerly.
“That man? With the face of a boy?”
“Ah, madame, never mind his face. It makes a good mask. But you will certainly see him. He will have an interview with your husband to-morrow, and I will arrange for your own as soon as possible. Here we are in the Rue Neuve Saint Augustin, and here is your hotel. Will you make me one promise?”
“Let me hear.”
“To eat and to sleep.”
“That is two,” she said, trying to smile, “but I will try.”
“Ill, you will only be an added anxiety to Monsieur de Beaudrillart.”
“Yes. I shall not be ill. I am stronger than you can conceive. It frightens me, sometimes, to find how much I can bear.”
M. Rodoin saw her ensconced in her rooms at the hotel, and gave his address to the landlord, in case madame wanted anything. He bade her farewell with the words, “We shall triumph!” but his solitary reflections, as he drove towards his own house, were far from cheerful. “Unless some miracle happens, it is a lost case already,” he muttered, “and so Barraud thinks, and chafes. Yet there’s roguery somewhere, I’ll stake my head. If one only knew what proof Lemaire means to bring forward, or what one has to fight against! It matters nothing; we must fight somehow. After she has achieved the miracle of endowing my young baron with a backbone, what other miracles may not follow! And meanwhile—” He plunged his head in his hands and sat revolving, considering, rejecting. He hurried in the evening to Maître Barraud, and brought upon himself the imprecations of his friend, who was just issuing from his door, cigar in hand, on his way to the Opéra.
“Plague me more about this confounded Beaudrillart case, and I swear I’ll fling the whole thing up. Man, there’s a time for all things.”