bargain! Yes, don't you shake your head; you sold the
newspaper to the Cointets and pocketed all the proceeds, and that was
as much as the whole business was worth. You bear David a grudge, not
merely because you have plundered him, but because, also, your own son
is a man far above yourself. You profess to be prodigiously fond of
your grandson, to cloak your want of feeling for your son and his wife,
because you ought to pay down money _hic et nunc_ for them, while you
need only show a posthumous affection for your grandson. You pretend
to be fond of the little fellow, lest you should be taxed with want of
feeling for your own flesh and blood. That is the bottom of it, Papa
Sechard."

"Did you fetch me over to hear this?" asked the old man, glowering at
his lawyer, his daughter-in-law, and his son in turn.

"Monsieur!" protested poor Eve, turning to Petit-Claud, "have you vowed
to ruin us? My husband had never uttered a word against his father."
(Here the old man looked cunningly at her.) "David has told me scores
of times that you loved him in your way," she added, looking at her
father-in-law, and understanding his suspicions.

Petit-Claud was only following out the tall Cointet's instructions. He
was widening the breach between the father and son, lest Sechard senior
should extricate David from his intolerable position. "The day that
David Sechard goes to prison shall be the day of your introduction
to Mme. de Senonches," the "tall Cointet" had said no longer ago than
yesterday.

Mme. Sechard, with the quick insight of love, had divined Petit-Claud's
mercenary hostility, even as she had once before felt instinctively that
Cerizet was a traitor. As for David, his astonishment may be imagined;
he could not understand how Petit-Claud came to know so much of his
father's nature and his own history. Upright and honorable as he was, he
did not dream of the relations between his lawyer and the Cointets;
nor, for that matter, did he know that the Cointets were at work behind
Metivier. Meanwhile old Sechard took his son's silence as an insult,
and Petit-Claud, taking advantage of his client's bewilderment, beat a
retreat.

"Good-bye, my dear David; you have had warning, notice of appeal doesn't
invalidate the warrant for arrest. It is the only course left open to
your creditors, and it will not be long before they take it. So, go away
at once----Or, rather, if you will take my advice, go to the Cointets
and see them ab