Emilie hesitated and was lost. She married Léon Bleuet – married him because he could pay Mistral’s school fees. Marriage she reckoned would enable her to live in comfort until the girl was grown up and would make it possible for her to save at the same time. Léon was not a young man. When he died, she would be a widow with a considerable fortune.

But there he had lied to her. The first part of the contract was fulfilled to the letter. Mistral’s school fees were paid and Emilie lived in comfort, but when Léon Bleuet died, she discovered that the bulk of his money had been left to his nephew, a young man for whom he had a deep affection, while she had been left only their house in Paris and the property at 5 Rue de Roi.

Emilie could never decide whether the latter legacy had been a joke on the part of Léon or whether he intended it to make up for his deficiencies in other ways. He had considered it the best and most paying of the houses he owned, and it was of all his interests his favourite.

Nevertheless he knew what she thought of the place, he knew, too, that she had never crossed the threshold nor taken the slightest interest in it save from the point of view of how much it contributed to their income. To leave it to her, to make it his only provision for her after five years of married life, was to all intents and purposes an insult.

Emilie did not at first realise exactly what a difference Léon Bleuet’s death was to make to her. When she visited his lawyer three days after the funeral she was already aware of the contents of Léon’s will so that she was steeled to endure a certain loss of comfort. After the lawyer had spoken to her of the value of the house in which they had lived, pointing out that, as it was in an unfashionable part of Paris, it would be difficult to effect an advantageous sale, she had spoken of 5 Rue de Roi.

‘I shall sell it,’ she said. ‘Have you any idea what it will fetch?’

The lawyer put his glasses on his nose and shuffled amongst the papers on his desk.

‘I anticipated that would be your decision, Madame, and I have therefore made a few tentative enquiries. I think you would do well to obtain ten thousand francs for this property, as a going concern, of course.’

‘Ten thousand francs!’ Emilie’s voice rose almost to a scream. ‘Is that all?’

‘It is, and if I may say so, Madame, quite a reasonable price. I am informed by people who know about such things that the place in the last few years was not doing so well as previously.’