sharp,--there's no time to be lost! I told Plimmer
to pack some of your things--not that there's any reason why you should
come if you don't want to--for there's nothing much the matter with the
boy, and he'll probably get well all the quicker if you----"

The speaker suddenly broke short the quick sentences; he stared round
the little room, and then, catching sight of Madame de Lera who had been
partly concealed by a screen, "Damn!" he said, and turning, scampered
heavily up the staircase, leaving the door behind him open.

Vanderlyn and his companion looked at each other uncomfortably. Madame
de Lera was not perhaps quite so shocked, either by Pargeter's
appearance or by his one exclamation apparently addressed to herself, as
the punctilious American supposed her to be. She knew no word of the
English language, and in her heart regarded all foreigners as
barbarians.

They waited,--it seemed a long, long time, but as a matter of fact it
was but a very few minutes after Pargeter's abrupt entrance and exit,
when his short quick steps were heard resounding down the long suite of
reception-rooms. As he walked into the boudoir, the master of the
house--this time dressed in a suit of the large checks he generally
wore--bowed awkwardly to Madame de Lera, and then went over and shut the
door giving access to the winding staircase, that which in his hurry he
had omitted to close behind him. Then, and not till then, he turned to
Laurence Vanderlyn.

"Well?" he said, "what's happened to Peggy? I'm told she's not here. Is
she ill?"

"Peggy never arrived at Marly-le-Roi," said Vanderlyn.

To himself his very voice seemed changed, his words charged with
terrible significance; but to Pargeter, the answer given to his question
sounded disagreeably indifferent and matter-of-fact.

"Never arrived?" he echoed. "Where is she then? You don't mean to say
she's lost?"

"Madame de Lera," said Vanderlyn, still in the same quiet, emotionless
voice, "thinks that she's met with an accident,"--he looked imploringly
at the Frenchwoman; surely it was time that she should come to his help.
"I am telling Mr. Pargeter," he said to her in French, "that you fear
she has met with an accident"

"Yes!" she exclaimed, eagerly turning to Pargeter, "how can it be
otherwise, Monsieur?" She hesitated, looked at Vanderlyn, then quickly
withdrew her eyes from his face. His eyes were full of agony. She felt
as if she had peered through a secret window of