"Money, soul of my soul," said Straz, who had almost reverted to the original gushing and poetic Nicolas of Adelaide's remembrance, the lover whom in pre-Sigmaringen days she had cajoled and despised and betrayed. "Not a large fortune certainly, but between her grandmother's estate and her father's savings she has a sum of 80,000 francs invested in the Belgian cloth manufactory and dyeing works of M. Charles Tessier. Not a fortune, but not a sum to be at all despised." He added: "I have obtained this information from a person—formerly a clerk in the employment of the Versailles firm of solicitors who enjoyed the confidence of M. le Colonel and his sainted mother." The quirk of his lips and the roll of his eyes as he made this reference, so unsavory in the ears of Adelaide, cannot be described. "From this retentive person—I refer to the ex-clerk—I have purchased the intelligence I now divide with her who has the right to share the secrets of my heart."
Adelaide had previously seated herself, at a motion of his finger. She looked up now as he thrust a hand between his vest and shirt-bosom. Their glances met. He said to her with a snap of his thick white fingers:
"No! Put that out of your head, ma cocotte! Not a sou of de Bayard's will ever come his widow's way."
This uncanny faculty of the Roumanian for reading her unspoken thoughts was one of the secrets of his power over Adelaide. She shuddered now, encountering his look.
"Don't you know," he was demanding, "that with her unique beauty Mademoiselle would be a fortune in our pockets even were she penniless? What! you doubt the justice of my taste—which placed on you the seal of approval when your own charms were at their perihelion. You who have paid the price for those supreme moments when celestial flames enveloped you—when you knew yourself nearest to the bosom of the Sun."
Were all the men in league with this man to taunt and mock and torture her? A fierce surge of blood rushed to her brain. She heard his thick chuckle as she loosened, with shaking hands, the lace about her throat.
"Why do you not kill me outright?" she cried to him, as the tide rushed back to her heart, and left her livid. "Are you not yet weary of playing this hideous farce of marriage? Why murder me by inches?... Will you never set me free?..."
He said, combing his clubbed beard with his thick yellow-white finger-tips:
"When you have helped to get back Mademoiselle, I will think about providing you an honorable retirement. Come! Be pliant.... You have my word that you shall be free. But without funds," he shrugged, "who can do anything? And Mademoiselle has these expectations ... and beyond these I have certain definite arrangements with—a certain personage—who is—content to pay handsomely for an introduction to her."
She cast caution to the four winds and shrieked at him furiously: