s big a share of it as you can."

"That's what I've always done wherever I have been."

"And, above all, make haste to fill your bag, because, you see,
in houses like that, one is never sure, one day, whether, the
next, the gentleman will not be at Mazas, and the lady at St.
Lazares."

They had done their second bowl of punch, and finished their
conversation. They paid, and left.

And Maxence and M. de Tregars were able, at last, to throw down
their cards.

Maxence was very pale; and big tears were rolling down his cheeks.

"What disgrace!" he murmured: "This, then, is the other side of
my father's existence! This is the way in which he spent the
millions which he stole; whilst, in the Rue St. Gilles, he
deprived his family of the necessaries of life!"

And, in a tone of utter discouragement,

"Now it is indeed all over, and it is useless to continue our
search. My father is certainly guilty."

But M. de Tregars was not the man thus to give up the game.

"Guilty? Yes," he said, "but dupe also."

"Whose dupe?"

"That's what we'll find out, you may depend upon it."

"What! after what we have just heard?"

"I have more hope than ever."

"Did you learn any thing from Mme. Zelie Cadelle, then?"

"Nothing more than you know by those two rascals' conversation."

A dozen questions were pressing upon Maxence's lips; but M. de
Tregars interrupted him.

"In this case, my friend, less than ever must we trust appearances.
Let me speak. Was your father a simpleton? No! His ability to
dissimulate, for years, his double existence, proves, on the
contrary, a wonderful amount of duplicity. How is it, then, that
latterly his conduct has been so extraordinary and so absurd? But
you will doubtless say it was always such. In that case, I answer
you, No; for then his secret could not have been kept for a year.
We hear that other women lived in that house before Mme. Zelie
Cadelle. But who were they? What has become of them? Is there
any certainty that they have ever existed? Nothing proves it.

"The servants having been all changed, Amanda, the chambermaid, is
the only one who knows the truth; and she will be very careful to
say nothing about it. Therefore, all our positive information
goes back no farther than five months. And what do we hear? That
your father seemed to try and make his extravagant expenditures as
conspicuous as possible. That he did not even take the trouble to
conceal the source