r Colville, generously. "It was
not a failure."

"Call it a temporary suspension of payment, then," agreed the banker,
imperturbably. "If it had not been for that, half your fortune would
have been goodness knows where by now. You wanted to put it into
some big speculation in this country, if I remember aright. And big
speculations in France are the very devil just now. Whereas, now, you
see, it is all safe and you can invest it in the beginning of next year
in some good English securities. It seems providential, does it not?"

He rose as he spoke and held out his hand to say goodbye. He asked the
question of Colville's necktie, apparently, for he smiled stupidly at
it.

"Well, I do not understand business after all, I admit that," Mrs. St.
Pierre Lawrence called out gaily to him as he went toward the door. "I
do not understand things at all."

"No, and I don't suppose you ever will," Turner replied as he followed
the servant into the corridor.

CHAPTER XXXVII. AN UNDERSTANDING

Loo Barebone went back to the Chateau de Gemosac after those travels in
Provence which terminated so oddly on board "The Last Hope," at anchor
in the Garonne River.

The Marquis received him with enthusiasm and a spirit of optimism which
age could not dim.

"Everything is going a merveille!" he cried. "In three months we shall
be ready to strike our blow--to make our great coup for France. The
failure of Turner's bank was a severe check, I admit, and for a moment
I was in despair. But now we are sure that we shall have the money for
Albert de Chantonnay's Beauvoir estate by the middle of January. The
death of Madame la Duchesse was a misfortune. If we could have persuaded
her to receive you--your face would have done the rest, mon ami--we
should have been invincible. But she was broken, that poor lady. Think
of her life! Few women would have survived half of the troubles that she
carried on those proud shoulders from childhood."

They were sitting in the little salon in the building that adjoined the
gate-house of Gemosac, of which the stone stairs must have rung beneath
the red spurs of fighting men; of which the walls were dented still with
the mark of arms.

Barebone had given an account of his journey, which had been carried
through without difficulty. Everywhere success had waited upon
him--enthusiasm had marked his passage. In returning to France, he had
stolen a march on his enemies, for nothing seemed to indicate tha