Part 38 (1/2)

”Where is everybody?” she asked, in a voice rendered natural by effort

M Binet reared his great head and turned upon her eyes that were blood-injected He scowled, blew out his thick lips and made harsh noises in his throat Yet he took stock of her, so graceful and co so co fur-trireen, herRhinestone buckle above her adorably coiffed brown hair No need to fear the future whilst he owned such a daughter, let Scaramouche play what tricks he would

He expressed, however, none of these co reflections

”So you're back at last, little fool,” he growled in greeting ”I was beginning to ask reatly have surprised me if you had not returned in time Indeed, since you have chosen to play the fine hand you held in your oay and scorningcan surprise ainst it, looked down upon hiret,” she said

”So every fool says at first Nor would you ado your oay in spite of advice froirl, what do you know of ,” she reminded him

”No, but you may be presently, when you discover that you would have done better to have been guided by your old father So long as your Marquis languished for you, there was nothing you could not have done with the fool So long as you let hiertips to kiss ah, name of a name! that was the time to build your future

If you live to be a thousand you'll never have such a chance again, and you've squandered it, for what?”

Madeust

”Sordid, ah of the dregs of life, and so I should have thought have you You held a hand on which to have won a fortune if you had played it as I bade you Well, you've played it, and where's the fortune? We can whistle for that as a sailor whistles for wind And, by Heaven, we'll need to whistle presently if the weather in the troupe continues as it's set in That scoundrel Scaramouche has been at his ape's tricks with them They've suddenly turned moral They won't sit at table with er and sardonic mirth ”It was your friend Scaramouche set them the example of that He threatened my life actually Threatened my life! Called me Oh, but what does thatto happen to us will be that the Binet Troupe will discover it can hter This scoundrelly bastard I've befriended has little by little robbedIt's in his power to-day to rob h and vile enough to make use of his power

”Let him,” said hast ”And what's to become of us?”

”In no case will the Binet Troupe interestto Paris soon There are better theatres there than the Feydau There's Mlle Montansier's theatre in the Palais Royal; there's the Au Comique; there's the Comedie Francaise; there's even a possibility Ifor once He stretched out a fat hand, and placed it on one of hers She noticed that it trembled

”Has he promised that? Has he promised?”

She looked at him with her head on one side, eyes sly and a queer little smile on her perfect lips

”He did not refuse me when I asked it,” she answered, with conviction that all was as she desired it

”Bah!” He withdrew his hand, and heaved hiust on his face ”He did not refuse!” he mocked her; and then with passion: ”Had you acted as I advised you, he would have consented to anything that you asked, and what isthat lay within his ed a certainty into a possibility, and I hate possibilities--God of God! I have lived on possibilities, and infernally near starved on the place at that hed less confidently at her father's gloos But she was destined never to knohich indeed was the cruellest punishment of all She was to attribute all the evil that of a sudden overwhel of all the future hopes she had founded upon the Marquis and the sudden disintegration of the Binet Troupe, to the wicked interference of that villain Scaramouche

She had thisfrom M de Sautron, the Marquis would have found in the events of that evening at the Theatre Feydau a sufficient reason for ending an entangleht with too -up of the Binet Troupe was most certainly the result of Andre-Louis' work But it was not a result that he intended or even foresaw

So much was this the case that in the interval after the second act, he sought the dressing-room shared by Polichinelle and Rhodo

”I shouldn't trouble to change,” he said ”The piece isn't likely to go beyondscene of the next act with Leandre”

”What do you mean?”