one of his daughters. After a moment's reflection, he decided
to speak.

"This burying is an expensive business, mademoiselle. In the first
place, there's----"

"Who asked you to give the figures?" Mademoiselle de Varandeuil
interrupted, with the haughty air of superb charity.

The concierge continued: "And as I was saying, a lot in the cemetery,
which you told me to get, ain't given away. It's no use for you to have
a kind heart, mademoiselle, you ain't any too rich,--everyone knows
that,--and I says to myself: 'Mademoiselle's going to have no small
amount to pay out, and I know mademoiselle, she'll pay.' So it'll do no
harm to economize on that, eh? It'll be just so much saved. The other'll
be just as safe under ground. And then, what will give her the most
pleasure up yonder? Why, to know that she isn't making things hard for
anybody, the excellent girl."

"Pay? What?" said mademoiselle, out of patience with the concierge's
circumlocution.

"Oh! that's of no account," he replied; "she was very fond of you, all
the same. And then, when she was very sick, it wasn't the time. Oh! _Mon
Dieu_, you needn't put yourself out--there's no hurry about it--it's
money she owed a long while. See, this is it."

He took a stamped paper from the inside pocket of his coat.

"I didn't want her to make a note,--she insisted."

Mademoiselle de Varandeuil seized the stamped paper and saw at the foot:

_"I acknowledge the receipt of the above amount._

"GERMINIE LACERTEUX."

It was a promise to pay three hundred francs in monthly installments,
which were to be endorsed on the back.

"There's nothing there, you see," said the concierge, turning the paper
over.

Mademoiselle de Varandeuil took off her spectacles. "I will pay," she
said.

The concierge bowed. She glanced at him; he did not move.

"That is all, I hope?" she said, sharply.

The concierge had his eyes fixed on a leaf in the carpet. "That's
all--unless----"

Mademoiselle de Varandeuil had the same feeling of terror as at the
moment she passed through the door on whose other side she was to see
her maid's dead body.

"But how does she owe all this?" she cried. "I paid her good wages, I
almost clothed her. Where did her money go, eh?"

"Ah! there you are, mademoiselle. I should rather not have told
you,--but as well to-day as to-morrow. And then, too, it's better that
you should be warned; when you know beforehand y