was frightened. For hours and hours he walked up and down, asking God in
his madness for courage. He never found that courage.

"But what was he to do? He could not flee, having no money; and where
should he hide? He could not return to his bank; for there, by this
time, his crime must have become known. In his despair he ran as far as
the Champs Elysees, and late in the night he knocked at the door of Miss
Brandon's house.

"They did not know yet what had happened, and he was admitted. Then, in
his wild despair, he told them all, begging them to give him a couple of
hundreds only of the four hundred thousand which he had stolen in order
to give them to Miss Brandon,--a hundred only, to enable him to escape
to Belgium.

"They refused. And when he begged and prayed, falling on his knees
before Miss Sarah, Sir Thorn seized him by the shoulders, and turned him
out of the house."

Maxime, overcome by his intense excitement, fell into an easy-chair,
and remained there for a considerable time, his eyes fixed, his brow
darkened, repenting himself, no doubt, of his candor, his wrath, and his
forgetfulness of all he owed to himself and to others.

But, when he rose again, his rare strength of will enabled him to assume
his usual phlegmatic manner; and he continued in a mocking tone,--

"I see in your face, Daniel, that you think the story is monstrous,
improbable, almost impossible. Nevertheless, four years ago, it was
believed all over Paris, and set off by a number of hideous details