and go aboard the steamer on my return,
to welcome M. Bernier home--the privilege of an old friend. I am
told the _Armorique_ will anchor off the bar by daybreak. What do
you think? But it's too late to let me know. Applaud my _savoir
faire_--you will, at all events, in the end. You will see how it
will smoothe matters.'

'Baffled! baffled!' hissed Madame, when she had read the note; 'God
deliver me from my friends!' She paced up and down the room several
times, and at last began to mutter to herself, as people often do in
moments of strong emotion: 'Bah! but he'll never get up by daybreak.
He'll oversleep himself, especially after to-night's supper. The other
will be before him..... Oh, my poor head, you've suffered too much to
fail in the end!'

Josephine reappeared to offer to remove her mistress's things. The
latter, in her desire to reassure herself, asked the first question that
occurred to her.

'Was M. le Vicomte alone?'

'No, madame; another gentleman was with him--M. de Saulges, I think.
They came in a hack, with two portmanteaus.'

Though I have judged best, hitherto, often from an exaggerated fear of
trenching on the ground of fiction, to tell you what this poor lady did
and said, rather than what she thought, I may disclose what passed in
her mind now:

'Is he a coward? is he going to leave me? or is he simply going to pass
these last hours in play and drink? He might have stayed with me. Ah! my
friend, you do little for me, who do so much for you; who commit murder,
and--Heaven help me!--suicide for you!.... But I suppose he knows best.
At all events, he will make a night of it.'

When the cook came in late that evening, Josephine, who had sat up for
her, said:

'You've no idea how Madame is looking. She's ten years older since this
morning. Holy mother! what a day this has been for her!'

'Wait till to-morrow,' said the oracular Valentine.

Later, when the women went up to bed in the attic, they saw a light
under Hortense's door, and during the night Josephine, whose chamber was
above Madame's, and who couldn't sleep (for sympathy, let us say), heard
movements beneath her, which told that her mistress was even more
wakeful than she.

IV.

There was considerable bustle around the _Armorique_ as she anchored
outside the harbor of H----, in the early dawn of the following day. A
gentleman, with an overcoat, walking stick, and small valise, came
alongside in a littl