"Before we sold the business."
"And have you only just answered the letter, mademoiselle?" asked the notary.
Sylvie turned as red as a live coal.
"We wrote to the Institution of Saint-Jacques," remarked Rogron.
"That is a sort of hospital or almshouse for old people," said Monsieur Desfondrilles, who knew Nantes. "She can't be there; they receive no one under sixty."
"She is there, with her grandmother Lorrain," said Rogron.
"Her mother had a little fortune, the eight thousand francs which your father—no, I mean of course your grandfather—left to her," said the notary, making the blunder intentionally.
"Ah!" said Rogron, stupidly, not understanding the notary's sarcasm.
"Then you know nothing about your cousin's position or means?" asked
Monsieur Tiphaine.
"If Monsieur Rogron had known it," said the deputy-judge, "he would never have left her all this time in an establishment of that kind. I remember now that a house in Nantes belonging to Monsieur and Madame Lorrain was sold under an order of the court, and that Mademoiselle Lorrain's claim was swallowed up. I know this, for I was commissioner at the time."