In his eyes, the honor and fair fame of the old house he had served since his youth were at stake.
"What will become of us ?" he repeated again and again.

"Oh! these women--" One day Mademoiselle Planus sat by the fire with her knitting, waiting for her brother.
The table had been laid for half an hour, and the old lady was beginning to be worried by such unheard-of tardiness, when Sigismond entered with a most distressed face, and without a word, which was contrary to all his habits.
He waited until the door was shut tight, then said in a low voice, in response to his sister's disturbed and questioning expression: "I have some news.

I know who the woman is who is doing her best to ruin us." Lowering his voice still more, after glancing about at the silent walls of their little dining-room, he uttered a name so unexpected that Mademoiselle Planus made him repeat it.
"Is it possible ?" "It is the truth." And, despite his grief, he had almost a triumphant air.
His old sister could not believe it.

Such a refined, polite person, who had received her with so much cordiality!--How could any one imagine such a thing?
"I have proofs," said Sigismond Planus.
Thereupon he told her how Pere Achille had met Sidonie and Georges one night at eleven o'clock, just as they entered a small furnished lodging-house in the Montmartre quarter; and he was a man who never lied.

They had known him for a long while.