Page:Tales of two countries.djvu/114

100 "See, at last Monsieur Alphonse shows what he is fit for, now that he is quit of his dull and crabbed partner!"

Charles went slowly up the street with his head bent. Many people jostled him, but he heeded not. His life seemed to him so meaningless, as if he had lost all that he had ever possessed—or had he himself east it from him? Just then some one ran against him with more than usual violence. He looked up. It was an acquaintance from the time when he and Alphonse had been in the Crédit Lyonnais.

"Ah, good day, Monsieur Charles!" cried he. "It is long since we met. Odd, too, that I should meet you to-day. I was just thinking of you this morning."

"Why, may I ask?" said Charles, half-absently.

"Well, you see, only to-day I saw up at the bank a paper—a bill for thirty or forty thousand francs—bearing both your name and that of Monsieur Alphonse. It astonished me, for I thought that you two—hm!—had done with each other."

"No, we have not quite done with each other yet," said Charles, slowly.

He struggled with all his might to keep his face calm, and asked in as natural a tone as he could command: "When does the bill fall due? I don't quite recollect."

"To-morrow or the day after, I think," answered the other, who was a hard-worked business man,