“Madame!”
“But since we are on the subject, may I ask why you have so suddenly changed your views about this marriage?”
“Have you not heard? They are ruined.”
“Who? The Redacres?”
“Yes. Is it possible you have not heard of it?”
Mrs. Monteagle stared at Mme. Léopold with a troubled countenance for a moment.
“Sit down, I beg of you, and tell me what all this means,” she said, her tone changed in a second from anger to one of intense and painful interest.
Mme. Léopold was not sorry for the change as regarded her share in it; she did not want to quarrel with Mrs. Monteagle, and she felt that the wrong had been on her own side. She sat down and told all she knew. It seemed that a letter had arrived on the previous day, by the early post, with news of the death of some person, who by dying in this sudden way let Colonel Redacre in for an enormous sum of money—in fact, utterly ruined him. This was all that Mme. Léopold knew. Who the man was, or how the money was gone, she had not heard; but the main fact was positively true. M. Léopold heard it from M. de Kerbec, who knew more than he liked to tell; Mme. Léopold had heard it from her husband at the ball last night. Mr. Kingspring knew it too; he had been to see the Redacres in the morning. Apparently they wanted to keep the affair quiet for some little time, and this was why the door was closed yesterday on the plea of the colonel’s not being well.
“And this was why they sent the girls to the ball, no doubt,” said Mrs. Monteagle. “It is a most extraordinary affair. Do you know, I am inclined to think there is some mistake. I don’t believe Colonel Redacre ever speculated to the extent of half a crown in his life; in fact, he had nothing to speculate with, as he tells you himself; the money is his wife’s, and that, I know, is bound up so that he could not touch it.”
“I know nothing except that in some way they are ruined,” said Mme. Léopold. “The letter fell on them like a bombshell. I am very sorry for them—very.”