ighting against the fascination of
a serpent. Latterly, too, an air of discouragement seemed to dwell
upon her lovely face. I was half distraught with anxiety, and once or
twice, whilst I knelt upon the hard floor, scrubbing and polishing as
if my life depended on it, whilst he--the unscrupulous scoundrel--sat
calmly at his desk, reading or writing, I used to feel as if the next
moment I must attack him with my scrubbing-brush and knock him down
senseless whilst I ransacked his drawers. My horror of anything
approaching violence saved me from so foolish a step.

Then it was that in the hour of my blackest despair a flash of genius
pierced through the darkness of my misery. For some days now Madame
Dupont, Farewell's housekeeper, had been exceedingly affable to me.
Every morning now, when I came to work, there was a cup of hot coffee
waiting for me, and, when I left, a small parcel of something
appetizing for me to take away.

"Hallo!" I said to myself one day, when, over a cup of coffee, I
caught sight of her small, piggy eyes leering at me with an
unmistakable expression of admiration. "Does salvation lie where I
least expected it?"

For the moment I did nothing more than wink at the fat old thing, but
the next morning I had my arm round her waist--a metre and a quarter,
Sir, where it was tied in the middle--and had imprinted a kiss upon
her glossy cheek. What that love-making cost me I cannot attempt to
describe. Once Estelle came into the kitchen when I was staggering
under a load of a hundred kilos sitting on my knee. The reproachful
glance which she cast at me filled my soul with unspeakable sorrow.

But I was working for her dear sake; working that I might win her in
the end.

A week later Mr. Farewell was absent from home for the evening.
Estelle had retired to her room, and I was a welcome visitor in the
kitchen, where Madame Dupont had laid out a regular feast for me. I
had brought a couple of bottles of champagne with me and, what with
the unaccustomed drink and the ogling and love-making to which I
treated her, a hundred kilos of foolish womanhood was soon hopelessly
addled and incapable. I managed to drag her to the sofa, where she
remained quite still, with a beatific smile upon her podgy face, her
eyes swimming in happy tears.

I had not a moment to lose. The very next minute I was in the study
and with a steady hand was opening the drawers of the bureau and
turning over the letters and papers whic