y are unemployed. In this
room, reading a French newspaper, she found Paul Deulin's servant,
a well-trained person. And a well-trained French servant is the best
servant in the world. He took it for granted that Wanda had come to see
his master, and led the way to the spacious drawing-room occupied by
Deulin, who always travelled _en prince_.

"I am given for my expenses more money than I can spend," he said, in
defence of his extravagant habits, "and the only people to whom I want
to give it are those who will not accept it."

Deulin was not in the room, but he came in almost as soon as Wanda had
found a chair. She was looking at a book, and did not catch the flash of
surprise in his eyes.

"Did Jean show you in?" he said.

"Yes."

"That is all right. He will keep everybody else out. And he will lie. It
would not do, you know, for you to be talked about. We all have enemies,
Wanda. Even plain people have enemies."

Wanda waited for him to ask her why she had come.

"Yes," he said, glancing at her and drawing a chair up to the table near
which she was sitting. "Yes! What is the matter?"

"An unfortunate incident," answered Wanda, "that is all."

"Good. Life is an unfortunate incident if we come to that. I hope I
predicted it. It is so consoling to have predicted misfortune when it
comes. Your father?"

"No."

"Martin?"

"No."

"Cartoner," said Deulin, dropping his voice half a dozen tones, and
leaning both elbows on the table in a final way, which dispensed with
the necessity of reply.

"Allons. What has Cartoner been doing?"

"He has found out something."

"Oh, la! la!" exclaimed Deulin, in a whisper--giving voice to that
exclamation which, as the cultured reader knows, French people reserve
for a really serious mishap. "I should have thought he knew better."

"And I cannot tell you what it is."

"And I cannot guess. I never find out things, and know nothing. An
ignorant Frenchman, you know, ignores more than any other man."

"It came to Martin's knowledge," explained Wanda, looking at him across
the table, with frank eyes. But Deulin did not meet her eyes. "Look
a man in the eyes when you tell him a lie," Deulin had once said to
Cartoner, "but not a woman."

"It came to Martin's knowledge by chance, and he says that--" Wanda
paused, drew in her lips, and looked round the room in an odd, hurried
way--"that it is not safe for Mr. Cartoner to remain any longer in
Warsaw, or even in Poland. Mr.