descend from the heights of his love in
order, in his own words, "to get a supply of cash." As he had
disappeared very suddenly and completely for a time from the eyes of
mankind it was necessary that he should show himself and sign some
papers. That business was transacted in the office of the banker
mentioned in the story. Monsieur George wished to avoid seeing the man
himself but in this he did not succeed. The interview was short. The
banker naturally asked no questions, made no allusions to persons and
events, and didn't even mention the great Legitimist Principle which
presented to him now no interest whatever. But for the moment all the
world was talking of the Carlist enterprise. It had collapsed utterly,
leaving behind, as usual, a large crop of recriminations, charges of
incompetency and treachery, and a certain amount of scandalous gossip.
The banker (his wife's salon had been very Carlist indeed) declared that
he had never believed in the success of the cause. "You are well out of
it," he remarked with a chilly smile to Monsieur George. The latter
merely observed that he had been very little "in it" as a matter of fact,
and that he was quite indifferent to the whole affair.

"You left a few of your feathers in it, nevertheless," the banker
concluded with a wooden face and with the curtness of a man who knows.

Monsieur George ought to have taken the very next train out of the town
but he yielded to the temptation to discover what had happened to the
house in the street of the Consuls after he and Dona Rita had stolen out
of it like two scared yet jubilant children. All he discovered was a
strange, fat woman, a sort of virago, who had, apparently, been put in as
a caretaker by the man of affairs. She made some difficulties to admit
that she had been in charge for the last four months; ever since the
person who was there before had eloped with some Spaniard who had been
lying in the house ill with fever for more than six weeks. No, she never
saw the person. Neither had she seen the Spaniard. She had only heard
the talk of the street. Of course she didn't know where these people had
gone. She manifested some impatience to get rid of Monsieur George and
even attempted to push him towards the door. It was, he says, a very
funny experience. He noticed the feeble flame of the gas-jet in the hall
still waiting for extinction in the general collapse of the world.

Then he decided to have a bit of