ad the appearance of two women
clasped in each other's arms. Tearful and consolatory murmurs issued
mysteriously from that appearance. General D'Hubert pulled open the
nearest pair of shutters violently. One of the women then jumped up. It
was his sister. She stood for a moment with her hair hanging down and
her arms raised straight up above her head, and then flung herself with
a stifled cry into his arms. He returned her embrace, trying at the same
time to disengage himself from it. The other woman had not risen. She
seemed, on the contrary, to cling closer to the divan, hiding her face
in the cushions. Her hair was also loose; it was admirably fair. General
D'Hubert recognised it with staggering emotion. Mlle. de Valmassigue!
Adele! In distress!

He became greatly alarmed and got rid of his sister's hug definitely.
Madame Leonie then extended her shapely bare arm out of her peignoir,
pointing dramatically at the divan:

"This poor terrified child has rushed here two miles from home on
foot--running all the way."

"What on earth has happened?" asked General D'Hubert in a low, agitated
voice. But Madame Leonie was speaking loudly.

"She rang the great bell at the gate and roused all the household--we
were all asleep yet. You may imagine what a terrible shock.... Adele, my
dear child, sit up."

General D'Hubert's expression was not that of a man who imagines
with facility. He did, however, fish out of chaos the notion that his
prospective mother-in-law had died suddenly, but only to dismiss it at
once. He could not conceive the nature of the event, of the catastrophe
which could induce Mlle, de Valmassigue living in a house full of
servants, to bring the news over the fields herself, two miles, running
all the way.

"But why are you in this room?" he whispered, full of awe.

"Of course I ran up to see and this child... I did not notice it--she
followed me. It's that absurd Chevalier," went on Madame Leonie, looking
towards the divan.... "Her hair's come down. You may imagine she did not
stop to call her maid to dress it before she started.... Adele, my
dear, sit up.... He blurted it all out to her at half-past four in the
morning. She woke up early, and opened her shutters, to breathe the
fresh air, and saw him sitting collapsed on a garden bench at the end of
the great alley. At that hour--you may imagine! And the evening before
he had declared himself indisposed. She just hurried on some clothes and
flew down