only wanted one. Madame Branchard was not _her_ mother--but she
was still _a_ mother! Simone whispered so low that only the woman
heard:

"I will go with you."

Prosper having embarked on a sea of indiscretion, went through the day
consistently. With a love of the melodramatic in his Latin temperament
he had admitted the _hotel meuble sans ceremonie_: and late that
afternoon he gave entrance to another group of quite a different order,
and without formality ushered the lady and her friends to the terrace,
where the solitary inhabitant of another man's house was taking a
farewell beverage before leaving Paris.

"We have caught you in time, Jimmy!" Mrs. Falconer made a virtue of it.
"If you are absconding with the Montensier treasures, then let me show
Molly and the Marquis at least what has been left behind."

His bags and boxes in the hall, his automobile at the door, and
Bulstrode himself in travelling trim, it looked very much like a
flight, indeed. Miss Molly and the Marquis, it transpired, were able
to explore for themselves and to find in the gallery and salons
pictures and objects of interest to excuse a prolonged absence.

"They're engaged," Mrs. Falconer explained to her host. "Isn't it
ridiculous? As you know, she hasn't a cent in the world, and his
family are not in the secret, but Molly and De Presle-Vaulx _are_, and
_I_ am, and I brought them off in pity for a spin to Paris."

The apparition of the lady, whose mocking beauty had a fresh charm
every time he saw her--her worldly wisdom and her keen
reasonableness--made, as he stood talking with her, his past debauch in
philanthropies seem especially grotesque. With a long breath of joy at
the sight of her Bulstrode also realized how wonderfully separated from
her the introduction of another life into his environment would have
made him.

"Your garden is a waste," the lady criticised, "dusty and dull. I
don't wonder you're getting away. Fontainebleau, too, was only a
_faute de mieux_, and I have left it. One should get really far away
at this season. It's the time when only the persons who are actually
bred in its stones can stay in Paris--certainly the birds of passage
may now, if ever, fly."

"We are going to Trouville," she said; "we are all going to motor
through Normandy. Won't you come--won't you come?" He shook his head.

Mrs. Falconer looked across the terrace to where a little chair had
been overturned, and on the floor by it