“Well, my dear M. Fraisier, what is to be done?”
“Oh! that is your affair! I am not one of the next-of-kin, myself; but if I had the slightest claim to any of that” (indicating the collection), “I know very well what I should do.”
“That is just what I want to know,” La Cibot answered, with sufficient simplicity.
“There is a fire in the grate——” he said. Then he rose to go.
“After all, no one will know about it, but you and me——” began La Cibot.
“It can never be proved that a will existed,” asserted the man of law.
“And you?”
“I?... If M. Pons dies intestate, you shall have a hundred thousand francs.”
“Oh yes, no doubt,” returned she. “People promise you heaps of money, and when they come by their own, and there is talk of paying they swindle you like—” “Like Elie Magus,” she was going to say, but she stopped herself just in time.
“I am going,” said Fraisier; “it is not to your interest that I should be found here; but I shall see you again downstairs.”