“Let me tell you that I have forgotten nothing. Although my means are modest, I can, by selling out some bonds, realize enough to secure you against any embarrassment on that score. I also own property in Anjou which is valued at fifty or sixty thousand dollars, and I mean to sell it.”
“To sell it, yes. You heard right. Except, however, my home, my father’s house, with the little garden in front, the orchard, and the meadow adjoining the house. In that house my father and my mother have lived and died. I find them there, so to _say_, whenever I go in; their thoughts are still filling the rooms, after so many years. The garden and the orchard are the first little bits of land my father bought from his earnings as ploughboy. He cultivated them in his leisure hours, and there is literally not a foot of soil which he has not moistened with the sweat of his brow. They are sacred to me; but the rest--I have already given orders.”
“And you expect to sell every thing in the three days before your departure?”
“Take my place, I should think. I will leave you a power-of-attorney. Perhaps, if you make haste, you can get fifty thousand dollars for the property. You will invest that so as to be able to use it any moment. And, if ever Miss Henrietta should be compelled to leave her father’s house, you will hand the money over to her.”
“Well, it seems to me it would be more suitable to leave some one else in charge of that.”
“Oh! I do not know,--a more experienced man! It may be that the property will not bring as much as you expect. Or I might invest the money in the wrong funds. Money questions are so delicate!”
But Daniel said, shrugging his shoulders,--
“I do not understand why you should hesitate to undertake so simple a thing, when you have already consented to render me so signal and so difficult a service.”
So simple! M. de Brevan did not look upon it in that light.
A nervous shiver, which he could hardly conceal, ran down his backbone; drops of perspiration broke out on his temples; and he turned deadly pale.
“Fifty thousand dollars! That is an enormous sum.”
“Oh, yes!” replied Daniel in the most careless manner.
“Half-past three. Come, Maxime, be quick. My carriage is waiting. The notary expects us between three and four o’clock.”