He got them, of course, when it was a matter of solid
bargaining, for far less than twenty thousand, as he might, no
doubt, have done from the first. I daresay ten thousand dollars
covered the bill. Anyhow, there was a pretty solid hole in a
fortune of a hundred thousand pounds or so. And Leonora had to
fix things up; he would have run from money-lender to
money-lender. And that was quite in the early days of her
discovery of his infidelities--if you like to call them infidelities.
And she discovered that one from public sources. God knows
what would have happened if she had not discovered it from
public sources. I suppose he would have concealed it from her
until they were penniless. But she was able, by the grace of God,
to get hold of the actual lenders of the money, to learn the exact
sums that were needed. And she went off to England.
Yes, she went right off to England to her attorney and his while he
was still in the arms of his Circe--at Antibes, to which place they
had retired. He got sick of the lady quite quickly, but not before
Leonora had had such lessons in the art of business from her
attorney that she had her plan as clearly drawn up as was ever that
of General Trochu for keeping the Prussians out of Paris in 1870.
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