dinner at the Restaurant de la Gare
where he felt pretty certain he would not meet any of his friends. He
could not have asked Madame Leonore for hospitality because Madame
Leonore had gone away already. His acquaintances were not the sort of
people likely to happen casually into a restaurant of that kind and
moreover he took the precaution to seat himself at a small table so as to
face the wall. Yet before long he felt a hand laid gently on his
shoulder, and, looking up, saw one of his acquaintances, a member of the
Royalist club, a young man of a very cheerful disposition but whose face
looked down at him with a grave and anxious expression.

Monsieur George was far from delighted. His surprise was extreme when in
the course of the first phrases exchanged with him he learned that this
acquaintance had come to the station with the hope of finding him there.

"You haven't been seen for some time," he said. "You were perhaps
somewhere where the news from the world couldn't reach you? There have
been many changes amongst our friends and amongst people one used to hear
of so much. There is Madame de Lastaola for instance, who seems to have
vanished from the world which was so much interested in her. You have no
idea where she may be now?"

Monsieur George remarked grumpily that he couldn't say.

The other tried to appear at ease. Tongues were wagging about it in
Paris. There was a sort of international financier, a fellow with an
Italian name, a shady personality, who had been looking for her all over
Europe and talked in clubs--astonishing how such fellows get into the
best clubs--oh! Azzolati was his name. But perhaps what a fellow like
that said did not matter. The funniest thing was that there was no man
of any position in the world who had disappeared at the same time. A
friend in Paris wrote to him that a certain well-known journalist had
rushed South to investigate the mystery but had returned no wiser than he
went.

Monsieur George remarked more unamiably than before that he really could
not help all that.

"No," said the other with extreme gentleness, "only of all the people
more or less connected with the Carlist affair you are the only one that
had also disappeared before the final collapse."

"What!" cried Monsieur George.

"Just so," said the other meaningly. "You know that all my people like
you very much, though they hold various opinions as to your discretion.
Only the other day Jane,