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184 been so mistaken in his son-in-law's commercial faculty, Dobouziez was especially bitter with himself for having exposed the honor and the fortune of his daughter to the risks of this marriage.

Dobouziez had hoped for a divorce, but the child had come, and the mother feared that it would be taken away from her. In rehearsing the difficulties of his own situation, the manufacturer had not exaggerated. For a long time the factory had been losing money; it gave employment to but half its former staff. Dobouziez had drained his resources completely ten times to finance Béjard's deals. The suspension of payment of the American house, of which Béjard had received notice, affected him also. How would he meet this new complication? He could get out of the mess himself only by mortgaging the factory and his property.

But could he allow his daughter's husband, the father of his grandson and godson, to be declared a bankrupt?

Béjard waited his answer in silence. He had let him argue and vent his wrath, and now he was reading in the old man's contracted face the conflicting emotions that were struggling for mastery within him. When he thought the time had come to take up the subject once more, he resorted to his cloying tone of a crafty Jew.

"No more of these recriminations, father-in-law," he began. "And even though we throw our wrongs, real or fancied, in each other's faces for hours, what good is it going to do? Let's talk little, but keep to the point. It isn't so desperate, hang it all! It will come through all right if you don't persist in plunging me further and further in the scrape into which I feel