often invited us to dine with him—my brother and me."
Jean, with wide-open, glittering eyes, laid his hand on his handsome fair beard, a familiar gesture with him, and drew his fingers down it to the tip of the last hairs, as if to pull it longer and thinner. Twice his lips parted to utter some decent remark, but after long meditation he could only say this:
"Yes, he was certainly fond of me. He would always embrace me when I went to see him."
But his father's thoughts had set off at a gallop—galloping round this inheritance to come; nay, already in hand; this money lurking behind the door, which would walk in quite soon, to-morrow, at a word of consent.
"And there is no possible difficulty in the way?" he asked. "No lawsuit—no one to dispute it?"
Maitre Lecanu seemed quite easy.
"No; my Paris correspondent states that everything is quite clear. M. Jean has only to sign his acceptance."
"Good. Then—then the fortune is quite clear?"
"Perfectly clear."
30
