I
hastened to answer that I had no bad news, and wished to see her husband
on business connected with his employment.

"He is very late," she said, a shade of perplexity crossing her face. "I
have never known him so late before. Monsieur is unfortunate."

I replied that with her leave I would wait; on which she very readily
placed a stool for me, and sat down by the cradle. I remarked that
perhaps M. Nicholas had detained her husband: she answered that it might
be so, but that she had never known it happen before.

"M. Felix has evening employment?" I asked, after a moment's reflection.

She looked at me in some wonder. "No," she said. "He spends his evenings
with me, Monsieur. It is not much, for he is at work all day."

I bowed, and was preparing another question, when the sound of footsteps
ascending the stairs reached my ears, and led me to pause. Madame heard
the noise at the same moment and rose to her feet. "It is my husband,"
she said, looking towards the door with such a light in her eyes as
betrayed the sweetheart lingering in the wife. "I was afraid--I do not
know what I feared," she muttered to herself.

Proposing to have the advantage of seeing Felix before he saw me, I
pushed back my stool into the shadow, contriving to do this so
discreetly that the young woman noticed nothing. A moment later it
appeared that I might have spared my pains; for at sight of her husband,
and particularly of the lack-lustre eye and drooping head with which he
entered, she sprang forward with a cry of dismay, and, forgetting my
presence, appealed to him to know what was the matter.

He let himself fall on a stool, the first he reached, and, leaning his
elbows on the table in an attitude of dejection, he covered his face
with his hands. "What is it?" he said in a hollow tone. "We are ruined,
Margot. That is what it is. I have no more work. I am dismissed."

"Dismissed?" she ejaculated.

He nodded. "Nicholas discharged me this morning," he said, almost in a
whisper. He dared not speak louder, for he could not command his voice.

"Why?" she asked, as she leant over him, her hands busy about him. "What
had you done?"

"Nothing!" he answered with bitterness. "He has missed a place he
thought to get; and I must suffer for it."

"But did he say nothing? Did he give no reason?"

"Ay," he answered. "He said clerks were plentiful, and the King or I
must starve."

Hitherto I had witnessed the scene in silence, a prey to e