Cayrol seemed put out, and, with his hands in his pockets and his shoulders up, replied:
“This is a delicate matter which you ask of me. You will cause a quarrel between the Prince and myself--”
“Do you prefer quarreling with me?” asked the mistress.
“Zounds! No!” replied the banker. “But you place me in an embarrassing position! I have just promised to lend Serge a considerable sum to-night.”
“That is an act which he will scarcely forgive,” sighed Cayrol.
Madame Desvarennes placed her hand on the shoulder of the banker, and looking seriously at him, said:
“You would not have forgiven me if I had allowed you to render him this service.”
A vague uneasiness filled Cayrol’s heart, a shadow seemed to pass before his eyes, and in a troubled voice he said to the mistress:
“Because he would have repaid you badly.”
Cayrol thought the mistress was alluding to the money he had already lent, and his fears vanished. Madame Desvarennes would surely repay it.
“So you are cutting off his resources?” he asked.
“Completely,” answered the mistress. “He takes too much liberty, that young gentleman. He was wrong to forget that I hold the purse-strings. I don’t mind paying, but I want a little deference shown me for my money. Good-by! Cayrol, remember my instructions.”
And, shaking hands with the banker, Madame Desvarennes entered her own office, leaving the two men together.
There was a moment’s pause: Cayrol was the first to break the silence.
“What do you think of the Prince’s position?”
“His financial position?” asked Marechal.
“Oh, no! I know all about that! I mean his relation to Madame Desvarennes.”
“Zounds! If we were in Venice in the days of the Aqua-Toffana, the sbirri and the bravi--”
“What rubbish!” interrupted Cayrol, shrugging his shoulders.
“Let me continue,” said the secretary, “and you can shrug your shoulders afterward if you like. If we had been in Venice, knowing Madame Desvarennes as I do, it would not have been surprising to me to have had Master Serge found at the bottom of the canal some fine morning.”
“You are not in earnest,” muttered the banker.
“Much more so than you think. Only you know we live in the nineteenth century, and we cannot make Providence interpose in the form of a dagger or poison so easily as in former days. Arsenic and verdigris are sometimes used, but it does not answer. Scientific people have had the meanness to invent tests by which poison can be detected even when there is none.”