' as you say in America. Je suis ruine."

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 _roule completement roule_."

"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?"

The Marquis flashed at him:

"A month ago, yes! that would have been the one way out of my
embarrassment: but I am no longer in the market. It is the other
alternative."

Bulstrode in no case caring to hear put in words a tragically
disagreeable means of solving the problems of debt and love, and having
less faith in this extravagant, explosive alternative than in the
_marriage de convenance_, did not urge the Frenchman further. He
simply brought out--his quiet eyes fixed on the other:

"And the little girl?--Molly--Miss Malines?----"

He gave him three chances to think of the pretty child, and for the
first De Presle-Vaulx's expression changed. He had with a nonchalance
submitted to the discussion of his fortune and his fate, but now he
distinctly showed dignity.

"Don't, I beg of you, _speak_ of Mademoiselle Malines!" and then he
said more gently, "mille pardons, mon cher ami!"

Bulstrode smoked his Garcia meditatively. He had not attempted the
solving of other people's questions, had not played the good fairy for
a long time. He had the hazy feeling--such as he often experienced
just before stepping into the mysterious ex