"M. De Clameran, mother, is absent for eight days; and I must have the money to-night, or I am lost. Go! I have thought of everything before deciding. But one loves life at twenty!"
He drew a pistol half out of his pocket, saying with a grim smile, "This will arrange everything."
Madame Fauvel was too unnerved in reflecting upon the horror of the conduct of the supposed Raoul de Clameran to fancy that this last wild menace was but a means for obtaining money.
Forgetting the past, ignoring the future, and concentrating her thought on the present situation, she saw but one thing—that her son was about to kill himself, and that she was powerless to arrest his suicide.
"Wait, wait," she said; "André will soon return, and I will tell him that I have need of—How much did you lose?"
"Thirty thousand francs."
"You shall have them to-morrow."
"I must have them to-night."
She seemed to be going mad; she wrung her hands in despair.
"To-night!" she said: "why didn't you come sooner? Do you lack confidence in me? To-night there is no one to open the safe—without that—"