"Miriam's money never was in danger," he replied. "Miriam is my ward; you are only my client. There is no chance of Miriam being able to make ducks and drakes of her money." "That sounds as if I had been trying to do that with mine. "Well," admitted the banker, with a placid laugh, "if it had not been for my failure--" "Don't call it hard names," put in Dormer Colville, generously. "It was not a failure." "Call it a temporary suspension of payment, then," agreed the banker, imperturbably. "If it had not been for that, half your fortune would have been goodness knows where by now. You wanted to put it into some big speculation in this country, if I remember aright. And big speculations in France are the very devil just now. Whereas, now, you see, it is all safe and you can invest it in the beginning of next year in some good English securities. It seems providential, does it not?" He rose as he spoke and held out his hand to say good-bye. He asked the question of Colville's necktie, apparently, for he smiled stupidly at it. "Well, I do not understand business after all, I admit that," Mrs. St. Pierre Lawrence called out gaily to him as he went toward the door. "I do not understand things at all." "No, and I don't suppose you ever will," Turner replied as he followed the servant into the corridor. CHAPTER XXXVII AN UNDERSTANDING Loo Barebone went back to the Château de Gemosac after those travels in Provence which terminated so oddly on board "The Last Hope," at anchor in the Garonne River. The Marquis received him with enthusiasm and a spirit of optimism which age could not dim. "Everything is going _à merveille!_" he cried. "In three months we shall be ready to strike our blow--to make our great _coup_ for France. The failure of Turner's bank was a severe check, I admit, and for a moment I was in despair. But now we are sure that we shall have the money for Albert de Chantonnay's Beauvoir estate by the middle of January. The death of Madame la Duchesse was a misfortune. If we could have persuaded her to receive you--your face would have done the rest, mon ami--we should have been invincible. But she was broken, that poor lady. Think of her life! Few women would have survived half of the troubles that she carried on those proud shoulders from childhood." They were sitting in the little salon in the building that adjoined the gate-house of Gemosac, of which the stone stairs must have rung beneath the red spurs of fighting men; of which the walls were dented still with the mark of arms. Barebone had given an account of his journey, which had been carried through without difficulty. Everywhere success had waited upon him--enthusiasm had marked his passage. In returning to France, he had stolen a march on his enemies, for nothing seemed to indicate that his presence in the country was known to them.