Bulstrode would never be so near forty again, and De Presle-Vaulx was a spoiled child--at all events, all that could be spoiled in him had been taken care of by his mother, and in his own way he had spoiled a large part of what remained. He looked up smartly, for he had been following the pattern of the table-cloth. If the frankness of the other threatened to offend him, as he met the kind eyes of the American he found nothing there that could do otherwise than please him. He shrugged with his national habit, then threw out his hands without making any verbal reply, but his smile and his gesture comprehended so much that Bulstrode intelligently exclaimed: "Oh, but you don't mean to _say_----?" "I have not, monsieur, much to lose," the scion of an old house replied simply. "We have the reputation of being poor; but to-night and last night have quite 'wiped me out,' as you say in America. Je suis ruiné." Bulstrode lit his cigar. De Presle-Vaulx took from his pocket one of his own cigarettes and puffed at it gently. Bulstrode smoked silently, and thought of the young man without looking at him. He liked him, and did not understand him at all: not at all! He supposed, that with his different traditions, his Puritanism, his New World point of view, he could _never_ understand him, but he would enjoy trying to do so, for aside from the quality of spoiled boy, there was something of the man in De Presle-Vaulx to which the New Englander extremely responded. His next remark was impersonal: "Bon Jour, then, you think is not likely----?" "_Mon cher Monsieur_! ... She is not even mentioned for place! Even in the event of her winning," De Presle-Vaulx was gloomy, "I should be able to discharge my debt to you and nothing more." Again he looked up quickly. "I shall, of course, be quite able to discharge _that_; I only mean to say that _en somme_, I am _roulé completément roulé_." "What, then, are you going to do?" De Presle-Vaulx looked at the end of his cigarette as though he took counsel from it, and said measuredly: "There is, in my position, but one thing possible for a man to do." "You mean to say, marry, make a rich marriage?" The Marquis flashed at him: "A month ago, yes! that would have been the one way out of my embarrassment: but I am no longer in the market. It is the other alternative." Bulstrode in no case caring to hear put in words a tragically disagreeable means of solving the problems of debt and love, and having less faith in this extravagant, explosive alternative than in the _marriage de convenance_, did not urge the Frenchman further. He simply brought out--his quiet eyes fixed on the other: "And the little girl?--Molly--Miss Malines?----" He gave him three chances to think of the pretty child, and for the first De Presle-Vaulx's expression changed. He had with a nonchalance submitted to the discussion of his fortune and his fate, but now he distinctly showed dignity.