sumed upon her courtesy in anticipation, and was not far
from the heels of its ambassador. Even while madame was speaking, Jean
was opening the great front doors to those who proved--formal
introductions being duly effect by Mr. Phinuit--to be Madame la
Comtesse de Lorgnes, monsieur le comte, her husband (this was the
well-fed body in tweeds) and Mr. Whitaker Monk, of New York.

These personages were really not at all in a bad way. Their wraps were
well peppered with rain, they were chilly, the footgear of madame la
comtesse was wet and needed changing. But that was the worst of their
plight. And when Mr. Phinuit, learning that there was no telephone, had
accepted an offer of the Montalais motor car to tow the other under
cover and so enable Jules to make repairs, and Eve de Montalais had
carried madame la comtesse off to her own apartment to change her shoes
and stockings, the gentlemen trooped to the drawing-room fire, at the
instance of Madame de Sevenie, and grew quite cheerful under the
combined influence of warmth and wine and biscuits; Duchemin standing
by with a half-rejected doubt to preoccupy him, vaguely disturbed by
the oddness of this rencontre considered in relation to that
injudicious stop for dinner at Nant in the face of the impending storm,
and with Mr. Phinuit's declaration that he didn't give a tupenny damn
if they did all get soaked to their skins.

It seemed far-fetched and ridiculous to imagine that people of their
intelligence--and they were most of them unusually intelligent and
alert, if demeanour and utterances might be taken as criterion--should
adopt any such elaborate machinery of mystification and duplicity in
order to gain an introduction to the Chateau de Montalais. With what
possible motive...?

But there was the devil of having a mind like Duchemin's: once it
conceived a notion like that, it was all but impossible for him to
dislodge it unless or until something happened to persuade him of his
stupidity.

Now to make his suspicions seem at all reasonable, a motive was
lacking. And that worried the man hugely. He desired most earnestly to
justify his captiousness; and to this end exercised a power of
conscientious observation on his new acquaintances.

Monsieur le Comte de Lorgnes he was disposed to pass at face value, as
an innocuous being, good natured enough but none too brilliant, with
much of the disposition of an overgrown boy and a rather boyish
tendency to admire and imita