was a broken and restless one; he could not
rid himself of the recollection of the girl's face, and he felt as sure
as a man could well be that something was amiss. But how was he to
help her? At any rate he was going to try.

The clocks in the neighbourhood were striking eleven next morning as he
alighted from his hansom and approached the door of the studio. He
rang the bell, but no answer rewarded him. He rang again, but with the
same result.

Not being able to make any one hear, he returned to his cab and set off
for the Warwick Road. Reaching the house, the number of which
Katherine had given him, he ascended the steps and rang the bell. When
the maid-servant answered his summons, he inquired for Miss Petrovitch.

"Miss Petrovitch?" said the girl, as if she were surprised. "She is
not here, sir. She and Madame Bernstein left for Paris this morning."

CHAPTER VII

When Browne heard the maid's news, his heart sank like lead. He could
scarcely believe his ill-fortune. Only a moment before he had been
comforting himself with the thought that he would soon be standing face
to face with Katherine, ready to ask her a question which should decide
the happiness of his life. Now his world seemed suddenly to have
turned as black as midnight. Why had she left England so suddenly?
What had taken her away? Could it have been something in connection
with that mysterious business of Madame Bernstein's of which he had
heard so much of late? Then another idea struck him. Perhaps it was
the knowledge that she was leaving that had occasioned her unhappiness
on the previous afternoon. The maid who had opened the door to him,
and whose information had caused him such disappointment, was a typical
specimen of the London boarding-house servant, and yet there was
sufficient of the woman left in her to enable her to see that her news
had proved a crushing blow to the man standing before her.

"Can you tell me at what hour they left?" Browne inquired. "I was
hoping to have seen Miss Petrovitch this morning."

"I can tell you what the time was exactly," the girl replied. "It was
on the stroke of nine when they got into the cab."

"Are you quite certain upon that point?" he asked.

"Quite certain, sir," she answered. "I know it was nine o'clock,
because I had just carried in the first floor's breakfast; and a
precious noise, sir, he always makes if it is not on the table punctual
to the minute. There were so