The money was in his pocket--all in gold, in a canvas bag, tied up by Paula's own hands, which he had observed to tremble as she tied it.
As he leaned in the corner of the carriage he was thinking over the events of the morning which had culminated in that liberal response.

At ten o'clock, before he had gone out from the hotel where he had taken up his quarters, which was not the same as the one patronized by Paula and her friends, he had been summoned to her presence in a manner so unexpected as to imply that something serious was in question.
On entering her room he had been struck by the absence of that saucy independence usually apparent in her bearing towards him, notwithstanding the persistency with which he had hovered near her for the previous month, and gradually, by the position of his sister, and the favour of Paula's uncle in intercepting one of Somerset's letters and several of his telegrams, established himself as an intimate member of the travelling party.

His entry, however, this time as always, had had the effect of a tonic, and it was quite with her customary self-possession that she had told him of the object of her message.
'You think of returning to Nice this afternoon ?' she inquired.
De Stancy informed her that such was his intention, and asked if he could do anything for her there.
Then, he remembered, she had hesitated.

'I have received a telegram,' she said at length; and so she allowed to escape her bit by bit the information that her architect, whose name she seemed reluctant to utter, had travelled from England to Nice that week, partly to consult her, partly for a holiday trip; that he had gone on to Monte Carlo, had there lost his money and got into difficulties, and had appealed to her to help him out of them by the immediate advance of some ready cash.

It was a sad case, an unexpected case, she murmured, with her eyes fixed on the window.