“What causes you to suspect that Sonia knows anything?”
“Well,” replied this crafty, round-faced visitor, “considering how that young Russian let out at you when you were walking with her that moonlight night out in the garden, I don’t think there can be much doubt that she is fully aware of the mysterious source of her father’s income.”
“Sonia doesn’t know Russian. The fellow spoke in that language, I remember,” was his reply. “Yet I was a fool, I know, to have taken her over that accursed place—that hell in paradise. She is always perfectly happy at the Hôtel de Luxembourg at Nice, where each season she makes some pleasant friends, and never suspects the reason of my absences.”
“All of us are fools at times, Phil,” was his visitor’s response, as he selected a fresh cigar from the silver box upon the table and slowly lit it. “But,” he went on, “I do really think you are going too far in expecting that you can conceal the truth from the girl much longer. She isn’t a child, you must recollect.”
“She must never know!” cried the unhappy man in a hoarse voice. “By Gad! she must never know of my shame, Arnold.”
“Then go in with us in this new affair. It’ll pay you well.”
“No,” he cried. “I—I feel that I can’t! I couldn’t face her, if she knew. Her mother was one of the best and purest women who ever lived, and——”
“Of course, of course. I know all that, my dear fellow,” cried the other hastily. “I know all the tragedy of your marriage—but that’s years ago. Let the past bury itself, and have an eye to the main chance and the future. Just take my advice, Phil. Drop all this humbug about your girl and her feelings if she learnt her father’s real profession. She’ll know it one day, that’s certain. You surely aren’t going to allow her to stand in your way and prevent you from participating in what is real good solid business—eh? You want money, you know.”
“I’ve given my answer,” was the man’s brief response.
Then a silence fell between the pair of well-dressed cosmopolitans—a dead, painful silence, broken only by the low hum of the insects, the buzzing of a fly upon the window-pane, and the ticking of the old grandfather clock in the corner.