But he returned to his thought again and again.
"It is not the money," he said at length, when I, who knew what was coming, could no longer hold him. "It is—" he paused, his face suddenly red as he looked hard into his coffee-cup. "It is Lucille."
I made no answer, and it was Alphonse who spoke again, after a pause.
"What a hard face you have, mon ami!" he said. "I never noticed it before. I pity that poor Miste, you know—if you catch him."
The same evening I spoke to my old patron, whom I found in the morning-room, where he sat alone and in meditation. The doors of his own study were still locked, and no one was allowed to enter there. His manner was so feverish and unnatural that I almost abandoned my project of leaving the Rue des Palmiers.
"Ah!" he said, "what a terrible day—and that poor Alphonse! How did you leave him?"
I thought of Alphonse as I had left him, smiling under his mourning hat-band, waving a black glove gaily to me in farewell.
"Oh," I answered, "Alphonse will soon be himself again."
"Ah, my friend," exclaimed the Vicomte, after a sorrowful pause. "The surprises of life are all unpleasant. Pfuit!" he spread out his hands suddenly as if indicating a quick flight, "and I lose a friend and four hundred thousand francs in the twinkling of an eye. To think that a mere shock can kill a man as it killed the poor Baron."
"He had no neck, and systematically ate too much," I said. "I am now going to see if we cannot repair some of the harm that has been done."