"I have to apologize for troubling you," he began.

"Trouble, what trouble? Bah! You give me no trouble. It is you have the
trouble to come here. You come early and I have not got my crinoline. If
you are contented, so am I." Then she smiled, and sat herself down
suddenly, letting herself almost fall into her special corner in the
sofa. "Take a chair, Mr. Harry; then we can talk more comfortable."

"I want especially to see your brother. Can you give me his address?"

"What? Edouard--certainly; Travellers' Club."

"But he is never there."

"He sends every day for his letters. You want to see him. Why?"

Harry was at once confounded, having no answer. "A little private
business," he said.

"Ah; a little private business. You do not owe him a little money, I am
afraid, or you would not want to see him. Ha, ha! You write to him, and
he will see you. There; there is paper and pen and ink. He shall get
your letter this day."

Harry, nothing suspicious, did as he was bid, and wrote a note in which
he simply told the count he was specially desirous of seeing him.

"I will go to you anywhere," said Harry, "if you will name a place"

We, knowing Madam Gordeloup's habits, may feel little doubt but that she
thought it her duty to become acquainted with the contents of the note
before she sent it out of her house, but we may also know that she
learned very little from it.

"It shall go almost immediately," said Sophie, when the envelope was
closed.

Then Harry got up to depart, having done his work. "What, you are going
in that way at once? You are in a hurry?"

"Well, yes; I am in a hurry, rather, Madam Gordeloup. I have got to be
at my office, and I only just came up here to find out your brother's
address." Then he rose and went, leaving the note behind him.

Then Madam Gordeloup, speaking to herself in French, called Harry
Clavering a lout, a fool, an awkward, overgrown boy, and a pig. She
declared him to be a pig nine times over, then shook herself in violent
disgust, and after that betook herself to the letter.

The letter was at any rate duly sent to the count, for before Harry had
left Mr. Beilby's chambers on that day, Pateroff came to him there.
Harry sat in the same room with other men, and therefore went out to see
his acquaintance in a little antechamber that was used for such
purposes. As he walked from one room to the other, he was conscious of
the delicacy and difficulty of the task before him, and