behind her.

At the opera, the night before, a single word uttered by Miss Brandon
had sufficed to enlighten Daniel. But now this was a very different
matter. It was a potent fact, unmistakable and tangible, which came to
him in support of his suspicions.

In order to increase the passionate impatience of the count, they had
told him that Miss Brandon was still dressing, but that she was making
all haste to come down to him. Not a word had been said of her being
out, and of her return at that very moment. Where had she been? What new
intrigues had compelled her to leave the house just then? It must have
evidently been something of great importance to have kept her out till
so late an hour, and when she knew, moreover, that the count was waiting
for her.

This incident threw a flood of light on the cunning policy pursued in
this house, and on the clever and active complicity of M. Thomas Elgin
and Mrs. Brian. What their game really was, and how Count Ville-Handry
had been caught in the trap, he now understood well enough; he would
have been caught in it himself.

How clever these actors were! how perfect all the arrangements! and how
scientifically the smallest details were prepared! How marvellously well
even the parlor was arranged to serve the purposes of the owners! This
simple elegance could not but banish all doubts; and this horrible
portrait of the so-called Gen. Brandon--what a stroke of genius!

As to the lame leg of Sir Thorn, Daniel no longer believed in it.

"His leg is no more broken than mine," he thought.

But at the same time he marvelled at the self-denial of this gentleman,
who, in order to prove a falsehood, consented to wear his leg bandaged
up for months, as if it really had been severely injured.

"And to-night," said Daniel to himself, "the performance, no doubt, is
to be specially artistic, as they expected me."

Still, like a duellist, who tries to regain all his strength after a
sleepless night, Daniel was now fully prepared for the battle. He even
returned to the fireplace, for fear that his standing alone, and his
preoccupation, might betray his thoughts.

The conversation between Count Ville-Handry and M. Elgin had in the
meantime become very familiar; and the count was just detailing all his
arrangements for the approaching wedding. He would live, he said, with
his wife in the second story of his palace. The first story was to be
divided into two suites of apartments,--one for M.