CHAPTER XXXVI.MRS.ST.PIERRE LAWRENCE DOES NOT UNDERSTAND.
It was early in November that the report took wing in Paris that John Turner's bank was, after all, going to weather the storm.

Dormer Colville was among the first to hear this news, and strangely enough he did not at once impart it to Mrs.St.Pierre Lawrence.
All through the year, John Turner had kept his client supplied with ready money.

He had, moreover, made no change in his own mode of living.
Which things are a mystery to all who have no money of their own nor the good fortune to handle other people's.

There is no doubt some explanation of the fact that bankers and other financiers seem to fail, and even become bankrupt, without tangible effect upon their daily comfort, but the unfinancial cannot expect to understand it.
There had, as a matter of fact, been no question of discomfort for Mrs.
St.Pierre Lawrence either.
"Can I spend as much as I like ?" she had asked Turner, and his reply had been in the affirmative.
"No use in saving ?" "None whatever," he replied.

To which Mrs.St.Pierre Lawrence made answer that she did not understand things at all.
"It is no use collecting straws against a flood," the banker answered, sleepily.
There was, of course, no question now of supplying the necessary funds to the Marquis de Gemosac and Albert de Chantonnay, who, it was understood, were raising the money, not without difficulty, elsewhere.
Mrs.St.Pierre Lawrence had indeed heard little or nothing of her Royalist friends in the west.