“You have been to see my father?”
“No, madam. A week ago already, Count Ville-Handry left his palace.”
A mad thought, the hope that her father might have separated from his
wife, crossed Henrietta’s mind.
“And the countess,” she asked,--“the Countess Sarah?”
“She has gone with her husband. They live in Peletier Street, in a
modest apartment just above the office of the Pennsylvania Petroleum
Company. Sir Thorn and Mrs. Brian are there also. They have only kept
two servants,--Ernest, the count’s valet, and a certain Clarissa.”
The name of the vile creature whose treachery had been one of the
principal causes of Henrietta’s misfortunes did not strike her ear.
“How could my father ever be induced to leave his home?” she asked.
“He sold it, madam, ten days ago.”
“Great God! My father must be ruined!”
The old man bowed his head.
“Yes!”
Thus were the sad presentiments realized which she had felt when first
she had heard Count Ville-Handry speak of the Pennsylvania Petroleum
Company. But never, oh, never! would she have imagined so sudden a
downfall.
“My father ruined!” she repeated, as if she were unable to realize the
precise meaning of these words.
“And only a year ago he had more than a hundred thousand dollars a year.
Six millions swallowed up in twelve months!--six millions!”
And as the enormous amount seemed to be out of all proportion to the
shortness of time, she said,--
“It cannot be. You must be mistaken, sir; they have misled you.”
A smile of bitter irony passed over the old dealer’s lips. He replied,
as if much puzzled by Henrietta’s doubts,--
“What, madam, you do not see yet? Alas! what I tell you is but too true;
and, if you want proofs”--
He drew a newspaper from his pocket and handed it to Henrietta, pointing
out to her on the first page an article marked with a red pencil.
“There!” he said.
It was one of those financial sheets which arise every now and then, and
which profess to teach the art of becoming rich in a very short time,
without running any risk. This paper bore a title calculated to reassure
its readers. It was called “Prudence.” Henrietta read aloud,--
“We shall never tire repeating to our subscribers the words which
form our motto and our heading, ‘Prudence, prudence! Do not trust new
enterprises!’
“Out of a hundred enterprises which appear in the market, it may safely
be said that sixty are nothing but the simplest kind of wells, into
which the capital of foolhardy speculators is sunk almost instantly.
Out of the remaining forty, twenty-five may be looked upon as suspicious
enterprises, partaking too much of gambling speculations. Among the last
fifteen even, a careful choice must be made before we find out the few
that present safe guarantees.”
The young girl paused, not understanding a word of all this stuff. But
the old man said,--
“That is only the honey of the preface, the sweet syrup intended to
conceal the bitterness of the medicine that is to follow. Go on, and you
will understand.”