fourteen, twenty-three—here is some mistake. Let us go over it again. Yes, here it is. This is not your accounting. The miserly Lombard would cozen you of your honour if he could but sell it again. Here is an error of near ten thousand livres; let me correct it for you."
And while he stared at her she deftly copied the correct amounts from the slip she held concealed in her hand. She knew the figures were his own, but gave no token.
"I doubt not you would have looked over it more carefully before you signed it, and these matters would have been detected by your own eyes."
"Yes, yes," he replied nervously, reaching out his hand for the paper lest she observe—what her quick eyes had at first seen—that the contract already bore his signature and seal. She gave it him and he replaced it carefully in his breast.
"I will give those careless secretaries a lesson they sorely need," and in this disturbed condition of mind he blustered out of the apartment, forgetting his usual gallantries, which Madame so diplomatically put aside without giving too serious offence.
Jerome leaned against the window-facing, his unseeing eyes resting on the park beyond the little garden at our feet. His brow lowered, not as of a storm, but with the murkiness of a settled and dismal day. Perchance his thoughts wandered with his childhood's sweetheart amid the fertile vales of far away Anjou.
