to the door, she continued,
"Come out! Do you hear! Come out! I will have no more of your intrigues
and your Hallots!"

I pricked up my ears at the name. "But, Madame," I said, "one moment."

"Begone!" she retorted, turning on me so wrathfully that I fairly
recoiled before her. "I shall stay here till I drop; but I will have him
out and expose him. There shall be an end of his precious plots and his
Hallots if I have to go to the King!"

Words so curiously _a propos_ could not but recall to my mind the
confusion into which the mention of Du Hallot had thrown the secretary
earlier in the day. And since they seemed also to be consistent with the
warning conveyed to me, they should have corroborated my suspicions. But
a sense of something unreal and fantastic, with which I could not
grapple, continued to puzzle me in the presence of this angry woman; and
it was with no great assurance that I said, "Do I understand then,
madame, that M. du Hallot is in that room?"

"Monsieur du Hallot?" she replied, in a tone that was almost a scream.
"No: but Madame du Hallot is, and he would be if he had taken the hint I
sent him! He would be! But I will have no more secrecy, and no more
plots. I have suffered enough, and now Madame shall suffer if she has
not forgotten how to blush. Are you coming out there?" she continued,
once more applying herself to the door, her face inflamed with passion.
"I shall stay! Oh, I shall stay, I assure you, until you do come. Until
morning if necessary!"

"But, Madame," I said, beginning to see daylight, and finding words with
difficulty--for already I heard in fancy the King's laughter, and
conjured up the quips and cranks with which he would pursue me--"your
warning did not perhaps reach M. du Hallot?"

"It reached his coach, at any rate," the scold retorted. "But another
time I will have no half measures. As for that," she continued, turning
on me suddenly with her arms akimbo, and the fiercest of airs, "I would
like to know what business it is of yours, Monsieur, whether it reached
him or not! I know you,--you are in league with my husband! You are here
to shelter him, and this Madame du Hallot who is within here! And with
whom he has been carrying on these three months! But----"

At that moment the door at last opened; and M. Nicholas, wearing an
aspect so meek and crestfallen that I hardly knew him, came out. He was
followed by a young woman plainly dressed, and looking almost as much
frigh