"Oh, but you don't mean to say——?"
"I have not, monsieur, much to lose," the scion of an old house replied simply. "We have the reputation of being poor; but to-night and last night have quite 'wiped me out,' as you say in America. Je suis ruiné."
Bulstrode lit his cigar. De Presle-Vaulx took from his pocket one of his own cigarettes and puffed at it gently. Bulstrode smoked silently, and thought of the young man without looking at him. He liked him, and did not understand him at all: not at all! He supposed, that with his different traditions, his Puritanism, his New World point of view, he could never understand him, but he would enjoy trying to do so, for aside from the quality of spoiled boy, there was something of the man in De Presle-Vaulx to which the New Englander extremely responded.
His next remark was impersonal:
"Bon Jour, then, you think is not likely——?"
"Mon cher Monsieur! ... She is not even mentioned for place! Even in the event of her winning," De Presle-Vaulx was gloomy, "I should be able to discharge my debt to you and nothing more." Again he looked up quickly. "I shall, of course, be quite able to discharge that; I only mean to say that en somme, I am roulé completément roulé."
"What, then, are you going to do?"
De Presle-Vaulx looked at the end of his cigarette as though he took counsel from it, and said measuredly:
"There is, in my position, but one thing possible for a man to do."
"You mean to say, marry, make a rich marriage?"