Sometimes it was a loan, sometimes a liquidation, or a settlement
of dividends, which devolved upon him. Did he come home then? No.
He told you that he would dine out, and that it would be more
convenient for him to have a cot put up in his office; and thus
you were twenty-four or forty-eight hours without seeing him.
Surely this double existence must have weighed heavily upon him;
but he was forbidden from breaking off with you, under penalty of
being caught the very next day with his hand in the till. It is
the respectability of his official life here which made the other
possible,--that which has absorbed such enormous sums. The harsher
and the closer he were here, the more magnificent he could show
himself elsewhere. His household in the Rue St. Gilles was for
him a certificate of impunity. Seeing him so economical, every one
thought him rich. People who seem to spend nothing are always
trusted. Every privation which he imposed upon you increased his
reputation of austere probity, and raised him farther above
suspicion."

Big tears were rolling down Mme. Favoral's cheeks.

"Why not tell me the whole truth?" she stammered.

"Because I do not know it," replied the commissary; "because these
are all mere presumptions. I have seen so many instances of similar
calculations!"

Then regretting, perhaps, to have said so much,

"But I may be mistaken," he added: "I do not pretend to be
infallible." He was just then completing a brief inventory of all