he knew his absence from England to be unmarked and
unregretted. Annette and he seemed to get on well enough together. There
was no real communion between them. Paul was all on fire about his work,
and she had no more comprehension of his thoughts than a canary-bird
would have had. But it was not possible for a man of his temperament to
live constantly under the same roof, and to sit daily at the same
table with anybody, male or female, without developing some kind of
camaraderie. Mrs. Armstrong seemed to like the life fairly well, and to
find a pleasure in the fleeting society of the birds of passage who
went and came. She had dresses to her heart's content, and in her pretty
gelid way enjoyed a good deal of popularity; but by-and-by, as summer
again drew near, she wearied of her surroundings, and incited Paul to
move. The work on which he had been engaged was finished and disposed
of; there were a good many loose hundreds at the bank, and more were
coming. He was ready for a holiday, and for Annette's sake was willing
to persuade himself that he was in need of one. So in May weather they
set off to make a round of the old Flemish country--Ghent, and Bruges,
and Aix, and Mechlin. Thence they slid on to Namur, working slowly
towards Switzerland in Paul's fancy, but stopping by mere hazard at
Janenne, and being by a very simple accident enticed some four or five
miles from the main line of their route to Montcourtois. They had been
drawn aside in the first place to visit the famous grottoes of Janenne,
and the jolly old _doyen_ of Montcourtois was their fellow-passenger in
the brake which conveyed them to the station. The old priest was a man
of learning, and in his day he had travelled, and had known the world.
Paul and he fell into animated converse, and struck up an immediate
liking for each other. It turned out, curiously enough, that, though the
old gentleman had lived for twenty years within half a dozen miles of
the wonderful grottoes, he had never been prompted to visit them until
now. He was on the way to wipe out his reproach, and by the time
the sight-seeing was over Paul found himself so fascinated by his
simplicity, his bonhomie, and the charming, varied stream of his talk,
that he must needs invite the old gentleman to dinner at the Hotel of
the Three Friends, where preparations for his own reception for the
night had been made. The old priest accepted the invitation at once, and
early evening found them the