question, 'Now then, what is your answer to that?'

When he reached the Rue de Lille, he dashed through the door of rough
planks in the fence which surrounds the ruins, went up the steps, and
rang the bell once and again. He was struck by the gloomy look of the
building, now that no flowers or greenery covered the nakedness of the
gaping, crumbling masonry and the confusion of the twisted iron-work and
leafless creepers. The sound of pattens came slowly across the chilly
court, and the caretaker appeared, a solid woman, who, broom in hand and
without opening the gate, said, 'You want the bookbinder; but he isn't
here now.' Not here! Yes, Fage had gone, and left no address. In fact,
she was just cleaning up the cottage for the man who was to have the
appointment to the Cour des Comptes, which Fage had resigned.

Astier-Rehu, for appearance' sake, stammered out a word or two, but
his voice was lost in the harsh and mournful cries of a great flight
of black birds, which made the arches echo as they descended upon the
court. 'Why, here are the Duchess's rooks!' said the woman, with a
respectful wave of the hand towards the bare plane-trees of the Hotel
Padovani, visible over the roof opposite. 'They are come before the
Duchess this year, and that means an early winter!'

He went away, with horror in his heart.

CHAPTER XII.

The day following that on which the Duchess Padovani, to show herself
smiling under the blow which had fallen upon her, had appeared at
the theatre, she went, as she usually did at that time of year, to
Mousseaux. She made no change in her plans. She had sent out her
invitations for the season, and did not cancel them. But before the
arrival of the first instalment of visitors, during the few days'
solitude usually spent in superintending in detail the arrangements for
entertaining her guests, she passed the whole time from morning to night
in the park at Mousseaux, whose slopes stretched far and wide on the
banks of the Loire. She would go madly along, like a wounded and hunted
animal, stop for a moment from exhaustion, and then at a throb of pain
start off again. 'Coward! coward! wretch!' She hurled invectives at the
Prince as though he had been by her side, and still she walked with the
same fevered tread the labyrinth of green paths which ran down in long
shady windings to the river. Here, forgetting her rank and her position,
flinging off her mask and able to be natural at last, she would