ith a gesture full of confidence,

"Be easy," said the commissary: "she shall be found. A woman cannot
swallow millions at that rate, without attracting attention.
Believe me, we shall find her, unless--"

He paused for a moment, and, speaking slowly and emphatically,

"Unless," he added, "she should have behind her a very skillful and
very prudent man. Or else that she should be in a situation where
her extravagance could not have created any scandal."

Mlle. Lucienne started. She fancied she understood the commissary's
idea, and could catch a glimpse of the truth.

"Good heavens!" she murmured.

But Maxence didn't notice any thing, his mind being wholly bent upon
following the commissary's deductions.

"Or unless," he said, "my father should have received almost nothing
for his share of the enormous sums subtracted from the Mutual Credit,
in which case he could have given relatively but little to that woman.
M. Saint Pavin himself acknowledges that my father has been
egregiously taken in."

"By whom?"

Maxence hesitated for a moment.

"I think," he said at last, "and several friends of my family (among
whom M. Chapelain, an old lawyer) think as I do, that it is very
strange that my father should have drawn millions from the Mutual
Credit without any knowledge of the fact on the part of the manager."

"Then, according to you, M. de Thaller must be an accomplice."

Maxence made no answer.

"Be it so," insisted the commissary. "I admit M. de Thaller's
complicity; but then we must suppose that he had over your father
some powerful means of action."

"An employer always has a great deal of influence over his
subordinates."

"An influence sufficiently powerful to make them run the risk of
the galleys for his benefit! That is not likely. We must try and
imagine something else."

"I am trying; but I don't find any thing."

"And yet it is not all. How do you explain your father's silence
when M. de Thaller was heaping upon him the most outrageous insults?"

"My father was stunned, as it were."

"And at the moment of escaping, if he did have any accomplices, how
is it that he did not mention their names to you, to your mother,
or to your sister?"

"Because, doubtless, he had no proofs of their complicity to offer."

"Would you have asked him for any?"

"O sir!"

"Therefore such is not evidently the motive of his silence; and it
might better be attributed to some secret hope that he still ha