e
door, which would walk in quite soon, to-morrow, at a word of consent.

"And there is no possible difficulty in the way?" he asked. "No
lawsuit--no one to dispute it?"

Maitre Lecanu seemed quite easy.

"No; my Paris correspondent states that everything is quite clear. M.
Jean has only to sign his acceptance."

"Good. Then--then the fortune is quite clear?"

"Perfectly clear."

"All the necessary formalities have been gone through?"

"All."

Suddenly the old jeweller had an impulse of shame--obscure, instinctive,
and fleeting; shame of his eagerness to be informed, and he added:

"You understand that I ask all these questions immediately so as to save
my son unpleasant consequences which he might not foresee. Sometimes
there are debts, embarrassing liabilities, what not! And a legatee finds
himself in an inextricable thorn-bush. After all, I am not the heir--but
I think first of the little 'un."

They were accustomed to speak of Jean among themselves as the "little
one," though he was much bigger than Pierre.

Suddenly Mme. Roland seemed to wake from a dream, to recall some remote
fact, a thing almost forgotten that she had heard long ago, and of which
she was not altogether sure. She inquired doubtingly:

"Were you not saying that our poor friend Marechal had left his fortune
to my little Jean?"

"Yes, madame."

And she went on simply:

"I am much pleased to hear it; it proves that he was attached to us."

Roland had risen.

"And would you wish, my dear sir, that my son should at once sign his
acceptance?"

"No--no, M. Roland. To-morrow, at my office to-morrow, at two o'clock,
if that suits you."

"Yes, to be sure--yes, indeed. I should think so."

Then Mme. Roland, who had also risen and who was smiling after her
tears, went up to the lawyer, and laying her hand on the back of his
chair while she looked at him with the pathetic eyes of a grateful
mother, she said:

"And now for that cup of tea, Monsieur Lecanu?"

"Now I will accept it with pleasure, madame."

The maid, on being summoned, brought in first some dry biscuits in deep
tin boxes, those crisp, insipid English cakes which seem to have been
made for a parrot's beak, and soldered into metal cases for a voyage
round the world. Next she fetched some little gray linen doilies, folded
square, those tea-napkins which in thrifty families never get washed. A
third time she came in with the sugar-basin and cups; then she departed
to he