;
but he had resumed command.

"And now, Madame Brouillard, to do this thing in the very best way I ought
to say to you at once that our dear friend--did he ever tell you what he
was worth?" The speaker leaned against the door-post and seemed to concern
himself languidly with his black-rimmed finger-nails, while in fact he was
watching Attalie from head to foot with all his senses and wits. She
looked grief-stricken and thoroughly wretched.

"No," she said, very quietly, then suddenly burst into noiseless fresh
tears, sank into a chair, buried her face in her wet handkerchief, and
cried, "Ah! no, no, no! that was none of my business. He was going to
leave it all to me. I never asked if it was little or much."

While she spoke Camille was reckoning with all his might and speed: "She
has at least some notion as to whether he is rich or poor. She seemed a
few minutes ago to fear he is poor, but I must try her again. Let me see:
if he is poor and I say he is rich she will hope I know better than she,
and will be silent. But if he is rich and she knows it, and I say he is
poor, she will suspect fraud and will out with the actual fact indignantly
on the spot." By this time she had ceased, and he spoke out:

"Well, Madame Brouillard, the plain fact is he was--as you may say--poor."

She looked up quickly from her soaking handkerchief, dropped her hands
into her lap, and gazing at Camille through her tears said, "Alas! I
feared it. That is what I feared. But ah! since it makes no difference to
him now, it makes little to me. I feared it. That accounts for his leaving
it to me, poor _milatraise_."

"But would you have imagined, madame, that all he had was barely three
thousand dollars?"

"Ah! three thousand--ah! Michie Ducour," she said between a sob and a
moan, "that is not so little. Three thousand! In Paris, where my brother
lives, that would be fifteen thousand francs. Ah! Michie Ducour, I never
guessed half that much, Michie Ducour, I tell you--he was too good to be
rich." Her eyes stood full.

Camille started busily from his leaning posture and they began again to be
active. But, as I have said, their relations were reversed once more. He
gave directions from within the room, and she did short errands to and
from the door.

The witnesses came: first Jean d'Eau, then Richard Reau, and almost at the
same moment the aged Ecswyzee. The black maid led them up from below, and
Attalie, tearless now, but meek and red-eye