"He took them unconcernedly and brought her a receipt the same
evening bearing his uncle's signature. Three months after she
was pocketing a very handsome income. The sixth month Adolphe
disappeared. The old girl goes straight to the uncle with her
screed of paper. 'I never signed that,' says the stockbroker, 'and
my nephew never deposited any securities with me.' She flies like
a mad-woman to the Commissary of Police, to learn that Adolphe,
hammered at the Bourse, is off to Belgium, carrying with him
a hundred and twenty thousand francs he had done another old
woman out of. She never got over the blow; but we must say this
of her, she brought up her daughter mighty strictly, and showed
herself a very dragon of virtue. Poor Gabrielle must feel her
cheeks burn to this day only to think of her years at the
Conservatoire; for in those days her mother used to smack them
soundly for her, morning and evening. Gabrielle, why I can see
her now, in her sky-blue frock, running to lessons nibbling
coffee-berries between her teeth. She was a good girl, that."

"You knew her!" cried Jean, for whom these confidences formed
the most exciting love adventure he had ever known.

The old man assured him:

"We used to have fine rides with her and a lot of artists in old
days on horseback and donkey-back in the woods of Ville d'Avray;
she used to dress as a man, and I remember one day..." He finished
his story in a whisper,--it was just as well. He went on to say
he hardly ever saw her now that she was with Monsieur Didier,
of the Crédit Bourguignon. The financier had sent the artists
to the right-about; he was a conceited, narrow-minded fellow,