He has affairs of his own to manage, which he neglects.

A mere salary seems an insufficient motive for so deep an interest as he displays." Lucille did not answer for some moments.

Indeed, her needlework seemed at this moment to require careful attention.
"What other motive can he have ?" she asked at length, indifferently.
"I do not understand the story of the large fortune that slipped so unaccountably through his fingers," murmured Isabella, and her hearer's face cleared suddenly.
"Alphonse Giraud's fortune ?" "Yes," said Isabella, looking at her companion with steady eyes, "Monsieur Giraud's fortune." "It was stolen, as you know--for I have told you about it--by my father's secretary, Charles Miste." "Yes; and Dick Howard says that he will recover it," laughed Isabella.
"Why not ?" "Why not, indeed?
He will have good use for it.

He has always been a spendthrift." "What do you mean ?" cried Lucille, laying down her work.

"What can you mean, Isabella ?" "Nothing," replied the other, who had risen, and was standing by the mantelpiece looking down at the wood fire with one foot extended to its warmth.