“David told me, madame, that he only wished for a fortune for your sake and your brother’s; but it should be clear to you by now that to try to make a rich man of Lucien would be madness. The youngster would run through three fortunes.”
Eve’s attitude told plainly enough that she had no more illusions left with regard to her brother. The lawyer waited a little so that her silence should have the weight of consent.
“Things being so, it is now a question of you and your child,” he said. “It rests with you to decide whether an income of two thousand francs will be enough for your welfare, to say nothing of old Séchard’s property. Your father-in-law’s income has amounted to seven or eight thousand francs for a long time past, to say nothing of capital lying out at interest. So, after all, you have a good prospect before you. Why torment yourself?”
Petit-Claud left Eve Séchard to reflect upon this prospect. The whole scheme had been drawn up with no little skill by the tall Cointet the evening before.
“Give them the glimpse of a possibility of money in hand,” the lynx had said, when Petit-Claud brought the news of the arrest; “once let them grow accustomed to that idea, and they are ours; we will drive a bargain, and little by little we shall bring them down to our price for the secret.”
The argument of the second act of the commercial drama was in a manner summed up in that speech.
Mme. Séchard, heartbroken and full of dread for her brother’s fate, dressed and came downstairs. An agony of terror seized her when she thought that she must cross Angoulême alone on the way to the prison. Petit-Claud gave little thought to his fair client’s distress. When he came back to offer his arm, it was from a tolerably Machiavellian motive; but Eve gave him credit for delicate consideration, and he allowed her to thank him for it. The little attention, at such a moment, from so hard a man, modified Mme. Séchard’s previous opinion of Petit-Claud.
“I am taking you round by the longest way,” he said, “and we shall meet nobody.”
“For the first time in my life, monsieur, I feel that I have no right to hold up my head before other people; I had a sharp lesson given to me last night——”
“It will be the first and the last.”