ng up and down
discovered, what I might have guessed before, that it, was the Ruelle
d'Arcy. But mademoiselle? Fanchette? Simon? Where were they? No one was
to be seen, Tormented by doubts, I lifted up my voice and called on them
in turn; first on mademoiselle, then on Simon Fleix. In vain; I got no
answer. High up above me I saw, as I stood back a little, lights moving
in the house I had left; and the suspicion that, after all, the enemy
had foiled me grew upon me. Somehow they had decoyed mademoiselle to
another part of the house, and then the old woman had misled me!

I turned fiercely to the door, which I had left ajar, resolved to
re-enter by the way I had come, and have an explanation whether or no.
To my surprise--for I had not moved six paces from the door nor heard
the slightest sound--I found it not; only closed but bolted--bolted both
at top and bottom, as I discovered on trying it.

I fell on that to kicking it furiously, desperately; partly in a tempest
of rage and chagrin, partly in the hope that I might frighten the old
woman, if it was she who had closed it, into opening it again. In vain,
of course; and presently I saw this and desisted, and, still in a whirl
of haste and excitement, set off running towards the place where I had
left Simon Fleix and the horses. It was fully six o'clock as I judged;
but some faint hope that I might find him there with mademoiselle and
her woman still lingered in my mind. I reached the end of the lane, I
ran to the very foot; of the ramparts, I looked right and left. In vain.
The place was dark, silent, deserted.

I called 'Simon! Simon! Simon Fleix!' but my only answer was
the soughing of the wind in the eaves, and the slow tones of the
convent-bell striking Six.

CHAPTER XI. THE MAN AT THE DOOR.

There are some things, not shameful in themselves, which it shames
one to remember, and among these I count the succeeding hurry and
perturbation of that night: the vain search, without hope or clue, to
which passion impelled me, and the stubborn persistence with which
I rushed frantically from place to place long after the soberness of
reason would have had me desist. There was not, it seems to me, looking
back now, one street or alley, lane or court, in Blois which I did not
visit again and again in my frantic wanderings; not a beggar skulking
on foot that night whom I did not hunt down and question; not a wretched
woman sleeping in arch or doorway whom I did not see