He was always, on the surface, his old jesting, courageous, disillusioned self, but underneath was a listlessness which Mme. de la Vireville had never known in him. It terrified her. He had previously looked forward to walking a little with her in the garden one day; now it was enough for him to sit apathetically in the window. Sometimes he seemed to have neither strength nor inclination even for that. The surgeon talked, as he had talked before, of the effects of suffering and exposure on an exceptionally strong and vigorous constitution; the Bishop said to the Grand Vicar that he thought it was something that came very near to being a broken heart--broken, like so much else, at Quiberon; and Mme. de la Vireville, despairing, bewildered, and sometimes even a little wounded, carried her knowledge of the past like a heap of ashes amid her slowly dying hopes for the future. Had Fortuné, who had recked so little of blows and hardships and disappointments, come through so much to end like this? CHAPTER XXXVI ANNE-HILARION MAKES A PLAN, AND THE BISHOP A REVELATION (1) "Always elephants," observed the Comte de Flavigny with interest, holding up the little brass bowl of Indian workmanship which contained the sugar. "Always elephants--and monkeys!" "The Baba-sahib is spilling it," whispered Lal Khan, bending his turbaned head to the little boy's level, the while he tendered the tray with the coffee-cups to his master. He had just brought the coffee into the library, and it pleased the Baba-sahib, who had accompanied him, to offer the sugar to the two gentlemen. He was, however, dressed for out-of-doors. "You are going for a walk, Anne?" asked his father, as he helped himself. He was lying back in a great chair on one side of the fire. A wonderful January sun shone in upon Mr. Elphinstone's books. "Yes, Papa, with Baptiste. I am going to buy a new money-box, because since M. de Soucy opened my old one for me in the summer--when I thought to go to France--it has sometimes come open of itself." "Very unsatisfactory for a thrifty bairn," observed Mr. Elphinstone, who was sitting on the other side of the fire with a pile of manuscript on his knee. "Then you will transfer your money, I suppose, from the old to the new box?" "What is 'transfer'?" inquired Anne. "Oh, I understand. No, Grandpapa," and he shook his head mysteriously. "I am going to spend it." "Dear me!" said his grandfather. "And on what, pray?" "Well, first I thought," said Anne-Hilarion, "that I would give all the money in my money-box to M. le Lieutenant Tollemache for saving Papa, for since M. Tollemache is not poor, like M. de Soucy, it is permitted to offer him money--is it not? But Papa said . . . What was it you said, Papa?" The Marquis smiled at his small and earnest son, and put his arm round him. "I believe I told you to keep it for yourself, Anne."