care to meet her lover's wife, so she made her visits scarce.

Cayrol came every morning to talk on business matters with Madame
Desvarennes. He had resumed the direction of his banking establishment.
The great scheme of the European Credit Company had been launched by
Herzog, and promised great results. Still Herzog caused Cayrol
considerable anxiety. Although a man of remarkable intelligence,
he had a great failing, and by trying to grasp too much often ended by
accomplishing nothing. Scarcely was one scheme launched when another
idea occurred to him, to which he sacrificed the former.

Thus, Herzog was projecting a still grander scheme to be based on the
European Credit. Cayrol, less sanguine, and more practical, was afraid
of the new scheme, and when Herzog spoke to him about it, said that
things were well enough for him as they were, and that he would not be
implicated in any fresh financial venture however promising.

Cayrol's refusal had vexed Herzog. The German knew what opinion he was
held in by the public, and that without the prestige of Cayrol's name,
and behind that, the house of Desvarennes, he would never have been able
to float the European Credit as it had been. He was too cunning not to
know this, and Cayrol having declined to join him, he looked round in
search of a suitable person to inspire the shareholders with confidence.

His daughter often went to the Rue Saint-Dominique. Madame Desvarennes
and Micheline had taken a fancy to her, as she was serious, natural, and
homelike. They liked to see her, although her father was not congenial
to their taste. Herzog had not succeeded in making friends with the
mistress; she disliked and instinctively mistrusted him.