I could only get from him evasive answers and vague explanations.
Of course he did not fail to say, that, if he does withdraw, it is
because he despairs of ever succeeding in pleasing Gilberte. But
it isn't so: I know it; I am sure of it; I read it in his eyes.
Twice his lips moved as if he were about to confess all; and then
he said nothing. And the more I insisted, the more he seemed ill
at ease, embarrassed, uneasy, troubled, the more he appeared to me
like a man who has been threatened, and dares not brave the threat."

He directed upon his children one of those obstinate looks which
search the inmost depths of the conscience.

"If you have done any thing to drive him off," he resumed, "confess
it frankly, and I swear I will not reproach you."

"We did not."

"You did not threaten him?"

"No!"

M. Favoral seemed appalled.

"Doubtless you deceive me," he said, "and I hope you do. Unhappy
children! you do not know what this rupture may cost you."

And, instead of returning to his office, he shut himself up in that
little room which he called his study, and only came out of it at
about five o'clock, holding under his arm an enormous bundle of
papers, and saying that it was useless to wait for him for dinner,
as he would not come home until late in the night, if he came home
at all, being compelled to make up for his lost day.

"What is the matter with your father, my poor children?" exclaimed
Mme. Favoral. "I have never seen him in such a state."

"Doubtless," replied Maxence, "the rupture with Costeclar is going
to break up some combination."

But that explanation did not satisfy him any more than it did his
mother. He, too, felt a vague apprehension of some impending
misfortune. But what? He had nothing upon which to base his
conjectures. He knew nothing, any more than his mother, of his
father's affairs, of his relations, of his interests, or even of
his life, outside the house.

And mother and son lost themselves in suppositions as vain as if
they had tried to find the solution of a problem, without possessing
its terms.

With a single word Mlle. Gilberte thought she might have enlightened
them.

In the unerring certainty of the blow, in the crushing promptness
of the result, she thought she could recognize the hand of Marius
de Tregars.

She recognized the hand of the man who acts, and does not talk.
And the girl's pride felt flattered by this victory, by this proof
of the powerful en