IT was a very busy morning in Salabert's counting-house. Some large payments had to be made. The Duke himself had presided over the transactions and helped the cashier to count the notes. In spite of the many years he had spent in handling money, he could never part with a large sum without his hand shaking a little. He was nervous now, and absorbed, nibbling his cigar, but not spitting as usual, for his throat was dry. More than once he checked the clerk, believing that he was allowing two notes to pass for one, but on each occasion he was in error; the man was very dexterous at his work. When it was all done, the Duke withdrew to his private room, where he found waiting M. de Fayolle, the great importer of foreign horses, which he supplied to all the aristocracy of Madrid.

"Bon-jour, Monsieur," said the Duke, clapping him roughly on the shoulder. "Have you got another screw you want me to take off your hands?"

"Oh, Monsieur le Duc, the horses I sold you are not screws, not a bit of it. You have the best cattle that ever passed through my stables," said the Frenchman with a foreign accent and a servile smile.

"All the cast-off rubbish from Paris is what you sell to me. But do not suppose that I am taken in. I have known it a long time, Monsieur, a very long time. Only I can never look in your cherubic and smiling face without giving way."

M. Fayolle was smiling at the moment, showing his large yellow teeth from ear to ear.

"The face is the mirror of the soul, Monsieur le Duc; you may rely on me never to offer you anything but what is absolutely first-rate. Has Apollyon turned out badly?"

"Hm. So-so."

"You must surely be jesting! I saw him in the street the other day, in your phaeton. Every one turned round to look at him."

For some minutes they discussed various horses which Requena had bought of the Frenchman; he found fault with every one of them. Fayolle defended them with the enthusiasm of a dealer and a connoiseur. Presently, at a pause, he looked at his watch, saying:

"I will not detain you any longer. I came for the settlement of that last little account."

The Duke's face clouded. Then he said half laughing and half angry:

"Why, my good man, you are never happy unless you are getting money out of me."

At the same time he put his hand in his pocket and took out his note-book. M. Fayolle still smiled, saying that he could not bear to ask for it, knowing that the Duke was such a pauper, and that it would be dreadful indeed to see him reduced to beggary, a delicate joke which Requena did not seem to hear, being absorbed in counting out the paper. He laid out seven notes of one hundred dollars each and handed them to Fayolle, ringing a bell for a clerk to bring a form of receipt. Fayolle, on his part, counted them, and then said:

"You have made a mistake, Monsieur le Duc, the account is for eight hundred dollars, and you have only given me seven."

Salabert did not seem to have heard him. With his eyes half-closed, and shifting his cigar from one corner of his mouth to the other, he sat silent, looking at the pocket-book, after fastening it with an elastic band.

"This is one hundred dollars short," Fayolle reiterated.

"What? Short? Count once more. It is impossible!"

The horse-dealer counted.

"Three thousand five hundred pesetas."

"You see, I could not be wrong."

"But the horse was to cost four thousand. That was a bargain."

The Duke's face expressed the most candid surprise.

"What! Four thousand pesetas? No, my friend, no. The horse was to be three thousand five hundred. It was on that understanding that I bought it."

"Monsieur le Duc, you really are under a mistake," said Fayolle, now quite grave. "You must remember that we finally agreed on four thousand."

"I remember all about it. It is you who have a bad memory. Here," he added to a clerk who came in with the receipt-form, "go downstairs, one of you, to the stables, and ask Benigno how much I told him I was to give for Apollyon?"

And at the same time, taking advantage of the moment when Fayolle looked at the messenger, he made a significant grimace at the man. The coachman's answer by the clerk was that the horse was to be three thousand five hundred pesetas.

Thereupon the dealer grew angry. He was quite positive that the bargain had stood at eight hundred dollars, and it was in this belief that he had delivered it. Otherwise the horse should never have left his stable.

Requena allowed him to talk himself out, only uttering grunts of dissent, without exciting himself in the smallest degree. Only when Fayolle talked of having the horse back, he said in a lazy tone:

"Then you evidently have some one in your eye who will give you eight hundred, and you want to be off the bargain?"

"Monsieur le Duc, I swear to you that it is nothing of the kind. Only I am positive I am right."

The banker was seized by an opportune fit of coughing; his eyes were bloodshot, and his cheeks turned purple. Then he deliberately wiped his mouth and rose, and said in his most boorish manner:

"Bless me, man! Don't put yourself out over a few miserable pesetas."

But he did not produce them.

The Frenchman was willing to take back the horse, but this again he failed to achieve. There was a short silence. Fayolle was within an ace of flying out, and making a fool of himself. But he restrained himself, reflecting that this would do no good, and that sueing the Duke would do even less. Who would be counsel for the plaintiff against such a man as Requena? So he resigned himself to his fate, and took his leave, the Duke escorting him to the door with much politeness, and clapping him affectionately on the shoulder.

When the banker returned to his seat at the table, his eyes glistened under his heavy eyelids with a smile of sarcastic triumph. A few minutes after he again rang the bell.

"Go and inquire whether the Duchess is alone, or if she has visitors," he said to the man who answered it. And while the servant went on the errand he sat motionless, leaning back in his chair, with his hands folded, meditating.

"Padre Ortega is with the Duchess," was the answer in a few minutes.

Salabert "pshawed" impatiently, and sank into thought once more. He had made up his mind to have a solemn discussion with his wife on ways and means. DoÑa Carmen had never mentioned money to him in her life, and he had never felt called upon to give her any account of his speculations and business matters. He regarded himself as absolute master of his fortune, and it never entered his head to think that she could make any claims on it. A friend, however, had lately enlightened him on this point. Speaking of DoÑa Carmen's feeble health, he had very naturally inquired whether she had made her will, and this friend, who was a lawyer, had at the same time mentioned the fact that, by the law of Spain, half of the business and fortune was hers.

This was a terrible shock to Salabert. He was frightened to watch his wife's decline; at her death her relations would claim half of all he had made, would poke their noses into his concerns, even the most private. Horror!

He consulted his lawyer. The simplest way of remedying the mischief, and depriving these relations of their rights, was to induce his wife to make a will in his favour. To the Duke this seemed the most natural thing in the world, and in the interview he proposed, he intended to suggest it to her as diplomatically as he could, so as not to alarm her as to her own state of health.

So he waited, arranging and looking over his papers, till he thought it was time to send again to inquire whether the priest was gone. But just as he was about to do so, the porter came in and told him that some gentlemen wanted to see him, and among them CalderÓn. The banker was much annoyed.

"Did you say I was at home?"

"Well, as you always are at home in the morning, SeÑor Duque——"

"Damn you!" said the banker, with a furious scowl. But raising his voice at once, and putting on the clumsy abruptness which he was so fond of affecting: "Show them in, of course," he said, "show the gentlemen in."

On this CalderÓn came in, followed by Urreta and two other bankers not less well known in Madrid. They all looked grave, almost sinister. But Salabert, paying no heed to their looks, began shaking hands and slapping backs, making a great noise. "Good business! Very good business, now to lock you all four up, and make you each pay a round sum as ransom! Ha, ha! Why here, in my room, are the four richest rascals in Madrid. Four gorged sharks! How is your rheumatism, Urreta? It strikes me that you want thoroughly overhauling as much as I do. And you, Manuel, how long do you expect to hold out? Your cousin, you see, is looking out very sharp."

The four gentlemen maintained a courteous reserve, and their extreme gravity cut short this impertinent banter. The case was, in fact, a serious one. About a year ago Salabert had sold them the business of a railway from B—— to S——, which was already in full work, with all the plant and rolling-stock. Though it had not been committed to writing, it was fully understood by both parties that when the extension from S—— to V—— should be put up for sale, as it was in connection with the other line, Salabert should advance no claims, but leave it to them to treat for it. Now, it had come to their knowledge that the Duke had failed to keep his word, and had tried to jockey them in the most barefaced way, by making a bid for the line.

The first to speak was CalderÓn.

"Antonio," he said, "we have come to quarrel with you very seriously."

"Impossible! Quarrel with such an inoffensive creature as I am?"

"You will remember that when we bought up your railway, you agreed, or to be accurate, you solemnly promised, not to tender for the purchase of the extension from S—— to V——."

"Certainly I remember it, perfectly."

"But we see with surprise that an offer from you——"

"An offer from me!" exclaimed the Duke, in the greatest surprise, and opening his prominent eyes very wide. "Who told you that cock-and-bull story?"

"It is not a cock-and-bull story. I, myself, saw your signature," said the Marques de Arbiol.

"My signature? Impossible."

"My good friend, I tell you I saw it with my own eyes. 'Antonio Salabert, Duke de Requena,'" replied Arbiol, very gravely.

"It cannot be; it is impossible!" repeated the Duke, walking up and down the room in the most violent excitement. "It must be a forgery."

Arbiol smiled scornfully.

"It bore your seal."

"My seal?" he exclaimed, with ready parry. "Then the forgery was committed in my own house. You cannot imagine what scoundrels I have about me. I should need a hundred eyes." Foaming with rage, he rang the bell.

"Now we shall see; we will find out whether I have been deceived or no. Send Llera in here," he said to the servant who appeared. "And all the clerks—immediately, this instant!"

Arbiol glanced at his companions, and shrugged his shoulders. But Requena, though he saw this, did not choose to notice it; he went on growling, snorting, uttering the most violent interjections, and walking to and fro. Presently Llera made his appearance, followed by a group of abject-looking clerks, ill-dressed and common. Salabert placed himself in front of them, with his arms crossed, and said vehemently:

"Look here, Llera, I mean to find out who is the scoundrel who presented a tender, in my name, with a forged copy of my signature, for the purchase of the S—— and V—— line of railway. Do you know anything of the matter?"

Llera, after looking him straight in the face, bent his head without replying.

"And you others, do you know anything about it? Heh, do you know anything whatever?"

The clerks in the same way stared at him; then they looked at Llera, and they too bent their heads and stood speechless.

Salabert, with well-feigned fury, eyed them all in turn, and at length addressing his visitors:

"You see," he said; "no one answers. The guilty man, or men, lurk among them; for I suspect that more than one must be concerned. Do not be afraid, I will give them a lesson, a terrible lesson. I will not rest till I have them before the judge. Go," he added, to the delinquents, "and those of you who are guilty may well quake. Justice will soon overtake you."

To judge by the absolute indifference with which this fulmination was received, the criminals must have been hardened indeed. Each man went back to his place and his work as though the sword of Nemesis were not drawn to cut his throat.

The bankers were half amused and half angry. At last one of the quartette, biting his lips for fear of laughing outright, held out his hand with a contemptuous gesture, saying:

"Good-bye, Salabert—au revoir."

The others followed his example without another word about the business which had brought them. The Duke was not at all disconcerted; he politely saw them to the head of the stairs, firing wrathful lightnings at his clerks as he led his visitors through the office. On his return he took not the slightest notice of the men; he walked down the room like an actor crossing behind the scenes as he comes off the stage.

Soon after this performance he went downstairs himself, to go to his wife's room. He found her alone, reading a book of devotions. DoÑa Carmen, who had always been pious, had of late given herself up almost exclusively to religious exercises. Her failing strength cut her off more and more from the outer world, and left her sadly submissive to the priests who visited her. Salabert had never opposed this taste for devotion; he regarded it with pitying indifference, as an innocent mania. However, just lately, some rather large bounties of DoÑa Carmen's had alarmed him, and he had felt obliged to give her a paternal lecture. He was accustomed to find her submissive, unambitious, absolutely indifferent to the result of his various speculations; he treated her as a child, if not as a faithful dog, whose head he might now and then pat kindly. The hapless woman never had interfered in his life, his toil, or his vices. Though his mistresses and fearful extravagance were discussed by all the rest of the world, DoÑa Carmen knew nothing of them, or ignored them. Nevertheless, the Duke's last connection with Amparo had distressed her more than any former one. This arrogant but low creature delighted in annoying the Duchess in every possible way, which was what none of her predecessors had done. If she went out driving with her husband, Amparo would keep pace in her carriage and exchange significant glances with Requena. When the good lady gently complained of such conduct, Salabert would simply deny, not merely his smiles and ogling, but all acquaintance with the woman: he only knew her by sight, he had never spoken to her in his life. It was the same at the Opera; Amparo would stare all the evening at the Duke's box. At bull-fights and at races she made a display of reckless luxury which attracted general attention. Certain well-intentioned friends, in their compassion for DoÑa Carmen, kept her informed as to the enormous sums this woman was costing the Duke by her extravagance and caprices. These constant vexations, endured unconfessed to any one but her director, had told on the lady's health, reducing her to a state of weakness which made it seem a miracle that she was still alive. Salabert had something else to do than to consider her sufferings. He thought that with the title of Duchess, and such enormous wealth, in so splendid a house, DoÑa Carmen ought to be the happiest woman on earth.

"Well, how are you, old woman, how are you?" said he as he went in, in a half rough and half kindly tone which betrayed his entire indifference.

DoÑa Carmen looked up with a smile.

"What, you? What miracle brings you here at this hour?"

"I should have come earlier, but I was told that Father Ortega was with you. How did you sleep? Pretty well? That's right. You are not so ill as you fancy. Why do you let the priests come hanging about you as if you were at the point of death?"

"Do you suppose a priest is of no use but when one is dying?"

"Of course priests about a house are indispensable to make it look respectable," he answered, stretching himself in an easy chair, and spreading out his legs. "Without a rag of black fustian, a newly furnished palace like this is too gaudy. Still, in the long run, they become a nuisance; they are never tired of begging; they have a swallow like a whale's. I should like to buy sham ones made of wax or papier-machÉ, they would answer every purpose."

"There, there, Antonio. Do not talk so wildly. Any one who heard you would take you for a heretic, and that you are not, thank God!"

"What should I gain by being a heretic? That does not pay." Then suddenly changing the subject, he said: "How is that caravansary of yours in the Cuatro Caminos getting on?"

He meant the asylum of which DoÑa Carmen was the chief benefactress.

"It is doing very well, excepting that the Marquesa de Alcudia wishes to retire, and we do not know whom to appoint as treasurer in her place."

"It is always empty on the Sabbath, I suppose?"

"Why?" said the lady, innocently.

"They are all off to Seville on broomsticks, no doubt."

"Bah! do not make game of the poor old things," said she, laughing. "You and I are old folks, too."

"Very true, very true," replied the banker, affecting serious melancholy. "We are a pair of old puppets, and one fine day, when we least expect it, we shall find ourselves removed to other quarters."

He had discovered an opening for the subject he wished to discuss, and had seized on it at once.

"No," said his wife, "you are strong and hearty enough. You will live to fight many a battle yet; but I, my dear, have but one foot in the stirrup."

"Nay, nay, we are both in the same plight. Once over the sixties there is no knowing."

"If such reflections did anything to bring you nearer God, and make you labour in His service, I should be glad indeed."

"Do you think I do nothing in His service, when I spend above five thousand dollars in masses every year?"

"Come, Antonio, do not talk like that."

"My dear child, it is a very good thing to think of the next world, but it is prudent, to say the least, to think of this world to. I have just lately been considering that if you or I were to die, there would be no end of complications for the survivor."

"Why?"

"Because husband and wife are not by law nearest of kin to each other, and if by chance either of us died intestate, our relations would be a perfect torment to the survivor."

"For that there is an easy remedy. We make our wills and it is settled."

"That is just what I have been thinking," said Salabert, endeavouring to make a show of calm indifference, which he was far from feeling. "It struck me that instead of our each making an independent will, we might come to a mutual arrangement."

"What is that?"

"A will by which each is the heir to the other."

DoÑa Carmen looked down at the book she still held, and did not immediately answer. The Duke, somewhat uneasy, watched her narrowly from under his eyelids, gnawing his cigar with impatience.

"That is impossible," said she at last, very gravely.

"What is impossible? And why?" he hastily asked, sitting upright in his chair.

"Because I intend to leave all I have, whether much or little, to your daughter. I have promised her that I will."

Salabert had never dreamed of stumbling on such an obstacle, he had thought of the mutual bequest as a settled thing. He was equally startled and vexed, but he immediately recovered himself, and assuming a serious and dignified manner, he spoke:

"Very good, Carmen. I have no wish to coerce you in the matter. You are mistress of your possessions, and can leave them to whom you choose, though you must remember that that fortune has been earned by me at the cost of much toil. During the years of our married life, pecuniary questions have never given rise to any differences between us, and I sincerely wish that they never may. Money, as compared with the feelings of the heart, is of no importance whatever. The thing that pains me is the thought that any other person, even though it be my own daughter, should have usurped my place in your affections."

At these words his voice broke a little.

"No, Antonio, no," DoÑa Carmen hastened to put in. "Neither your daughter nor any one else can rob you of the affection due to you. But you are rich enough without needing my fortune, and she wants it."

"No. It is vain to try to soften the blow, I feel it in the depths of my heart," replied Salabert in pathetic accents, and pressing one hand to his left side. "Five-and-thirty years of married life, five-and-thirty years of joys and griefs, of fears and hopes in common, have not availed to secure me the foremost place in your affections. Nothing that can be said will remedy that. I fancied that our union, the years of love and happiness that we have spent together, might be closed by an act which would crown our lives by making one of us inherit the whole of what we have gained. The devotion of a husband and wife is never better displayed than in a last will and testament."

Requena's oratory had risen to a tone of moral dignity which, for a moment, seemed to impress his wife. However, she replied with perfect sweetness but unshaken firmness:

"Though Clementina is not my own flesh and blood, I love her as if she were. I have always regarded her as my own child, and it seems to me an act of injustice to deprive a child of its share of an inheritance."

"But, my dear," exclaimed the Duke vehemently, "for whom do you suppose I want it but for my daughter? Make me your heir, and I pledge myself to transmit it to her, not only undiminished but greatly augmented."

DoÑa Carmen kept silence, but shook her head in negation. Her husband rose as though emotion were quite too much for him.

"Oh, yes! I understand! You cannot forgive me some little errors of caprice and folly. You are taking advantage of this opportunity of revenge. Very well, very well. Indulge your vengeance; but believe me when I say that I have never loved any woman better than you. The heart cannot be made to obey orders, Carmen; if I desired to tear your image out of mine, my heart would answer: 'No, I cannot give it up without breaking.' It is sad, very sad, to meet with so cruel a disenchantment at the end of our lives. If you were to die to-morrow, which God forbid! what worries and troubles must await me, besides the grief of losing the wife I adore. Why I, a poor old man, might be compelled to quit the house where I have lived so many years, which I built and beautified in the hope of dying under its roof in your arms!"

Requena's voice broke at judicious intervals, and his eyes filled with tears. When he ceased speaking he sank into his armchair as though quite crushed, pressing his handkerchief to his eyes.

But DoÑa Carmen, though tender-hearted and sensitive, showed no signs of emotion. On the contrary, she replied in a steady voice:

"You know perfectly well that there is no truth in all that. I am not capable of taking any revenge, nor, if I were, could there be any such vengeance in leaving all I can to your daughter, who is mine solely by the affection I bear to her."

The Duke changed his tactics. He looked at his wife compassionately for a few minutes, and then he said:

"The greatest happiness you could confer on Clementina to show your affection would be to get out of her way as soon as you can. Poor Osorio is up to the ears in hot water. Now I understand why his creditors have been so long-suffering. You no doubt have said something to his wife of this will of yours, and as you are somewhat ailing they are looking for your death like showers in May. Make no mistake about that."

DoÑa Carmen at these cruel words turned even paler than she always was. She clutched the arms of her chair with an effort to keep herself from fainting. This that her husband had said was horrible, but only too probable. He saw her agitation, and at once brought forward facts to confirm his hypothesis. He drew a complete picture of Osorio's position, pointing out how unlikely it was that his creditors should still give him time if they had not some definite hope to count on; and this could only be her own death.

The unhappy woman at last spoke. Her words were almost sublime:

"If, indeed, Clementina desires my death," she said, "then so do I, with all my heart. Everything I can leave is for her."

Salabert left the room in a towering rage, fighting like a bull assailed by crackers, or an actor who has been hissed off the stage.

DoÑa Carmen lay for some time motionless in the attitude in which he had left her, her eyes fixed on vacancy. At last two tears dropped from her eyes and slowly trickled down her cheeks.