“Heavens!” she exclaimed, “twenty-five thousand francs! and where should I get such a sum as that?”
La Peyrade gave no sign on his face of the vexation he might be supposed to feel. As for Thuillier, who now looked at him with sorrowful commiseration, he merely said:—
“You see, my friend!”
“So,” resumed la Peyrade, “you are very certain that you did not place in my hands the sum of twenty-five thousand francs; you declare this, you affirm it?”
“Why, monsieur! did you ever hear of such a sum as that in the pocket of a poor woman like me? The little that I had, as everybody knows, has gone to eke out the housekeeping of that poor dear gentleman whose servant I have been for more than twenty years.”
“This,” said Thuillier, pompously, “seems to me categorical.”
La Peyrade still did not show the slightest sign of annoyance; on the contrary, he seemed to be playing into Thuillier’s hand.
“You hear, my dear Thuillier,” he said, “and if necessary I shall call for your testimony, that madame here declares that she did not possess twenty-five thousand francs and could not therefore have placed them in my hands. Now, as the notary Dupuis, in whose hands I fancied I had placed them, left Paris this morning for Brussels carrying with him the money of all his clients, I have no account with madame, by her own showing, and the absconding of the notary—”
“Has the notary Dupuis absconded?” screamed Madame Lambert, driven by this dreadful news entirely out of her usual tones of dulcet sweetness and Christian resignation. “Ah, the villain! it was only this morning that he was taking the sacrament at Saint-Jacques du Haut-Pas.”
“To pray for a safe journey, probably,” said la Peyrade.