so I took no notice of his
ill-timed jest--indeed, I had already reached Montpellier in my pursuit
of the maid, Marie, before his message came.

I had no difficulty in finding the ex-servant and in learning all that
she could tell me. She was a devoted creature, who had only left her
mistress because she was sure that she was in good hands, and because
her own approaching marriage made a separation inevitable in any case.
Her mistress had, as she confessed with distress, shown some
irritability of temper towards her during their stay in Baden, and had
even questioned her once as if she had suspicions of her honesty, and
this had made the parting easier than it would otherwise have been.
Lady Frances had given her fifty pounds as a wedding-present. Like me,
Marie viewed with deep distrust the stranger who had driven her
mistress from Lausanne. With her own eyes she had seen him seize the
lady's wrist with great violence on the public promenade by the lake.
He was a fierce and terrible man. She believed that it was out of
dread of him that Lady Frances had accepted the escort of the
Shlessingers to London. She had never spoken to Marie about it, but
many little signs had convinced the maid that her mistress lived in a
state of continual nervous apprehension. So far she had got in her
narrative, when suddenly she sprang from her chair and her face was
convulsed with surprise and fear. "See!" she cried. "The miscreant
follows still! There is the very man of whom I speak."

Through the open sitting-room window I saw a huge, swarthy man with a
bristling black beard walking slowly down the centre of the street and
staring eagerly at he numbers of the houses. It was clear that, like
myself, he was on the track of the maid. Acting upon the impulse of the
moment, I rushed out and accosted him.

"You are an Englishman," I said.

"What if I am?" he asked with a most villainous scowl.

"May I ask what your name is?"

"No, you may not," said he with decision.

The situation was awkward, but the most direct way is often the best.

"Where is the Lady Frances Carfax?" I asked.

He stared at me with amazement.

"What have you done with her? Why have you pursued her? I insist upon
an answer!" said I.

The fellow gave a below of anger and sprang upon me like a tiger. I
have held my own in many a struggle, but the man had a grip of iron and
the fury of a fiend. His hand was on my throat and my senses were
nearly