'

'Deceiver! Manuela told me last night. She has her little Court, her
maids-of-honour. I think my _inconnue_ looked like a maid-of-honour.'

'She has her aunt, old Mademoiselle Henriette, and a couple of German
women, countesses or baronesses or something, with unpronounceable
names.'

'I can't believe she's German. Still, I suppose there are _some_
Christian Germans. Perhaps....'

'They're both middle-aged. Past fifty, I should think.'

'Oh.--Ah, well, that disposes of them. But how do you know her Majesty
hasn't a friend, a guest, staying with her?'

'It's possible, but most unlikely, seeing the close retirement in
which she lives. She's never once gone beyond her garden, since she
came back there, three, four, years ago; nor received any visitors.
_Personne_--not the Bishop of Bayonne nor the Sous-Prefet, not even
_feu_ Monsieur le Comte, though they all called, as a matter of
civility. She has her private chaplain. If a guest had arrived at
Granjolaye, the whole country would know it and talk of it.'

'Oh, I see what you're trying to insinuate,' cried Paul. 'You're
trying to insinuate that she came from Chateau Yroulte.' That was the
next nearest country-house.

'Nothing of the sort,' said Andre. 'Chateau Yroulte has been shut up
and uninhabited these two years--ever since the death of old Monsieur
Raoul. It was bought by a Spanish Jew; but he's never lived in it and
never let it.'

'Well, then, where _did_ she come from? Not out of the Fourth
Dimension? Who _was_ she? Not a wraith, an apparition? Why _will_ you
entertain such weird conjectures?'

'She must have come from Bayonne. An officer's wife, beyond a doubt.'

'Oh, you're perfectly remorseless,' sighed Paul, and changed the
subject. But he was unconvinced. Officers' wives, in garrison-towns
like Bayonne, had, in his experience, always been, as he expressed it,
frowsy and provincial.

IV.

One would think, by this time, the priest, poor man, had earned a
moment of mental rest; but Paul's thirst for knowledge was insatiable.
He began to ply him with questions about the Queen. And though Andre
could tell him very little, and though he had heard all that the night
before from Manuela, it interested him curiously to hear it repeated.

It amounted to scarcely more than a single meagre fact. A few months
after the divorce, she had returned to Granjolaye, and she had never
once been known to set her foot beyond the limits of her garden from
tha