nne
left the Marquis de Castellux with a little grave courtesy and joined
him. He had found her substitute a poor companion and walked much less
in the garden than usual.

"You find the Marquis very interesting?" he asked.

"Yes, but very provincial. One soon becomes weary of such company, yet
one must be kind, Monsieur l'Abbe," and Jeanne laughed lightly. She
appeared much more interested in him than she had been in the Marquis.

Richard Barrington talked to others for a little while, and then went
into the office. He found a servant and asked if he could see Legrand.
The doctor was out. Barrington was rather annoyed. He wanted to see the
room he was to have after Saturday. At present he was stalled like a
pig, he declared.

"Monsieur will have nothing to complain of after Saturday," the servant
answered.

"Which guest is leaving?"

"Pardon, monsieur, it is not etiquette to speak of it; but if monsieur
likes I can show him the room."

"Show it to me, then."

"I am a poor man, monsieur, and cannot afford to work for nothing."

"How much?" Barrington asked.

The servant named a price, and if he received many such fees he would
not long be able to call himself a poor man. Barrington paid him, and
was taken upstairs and shown Jeanne's room. He did not cross the
threshold, hardly glanced in at the door, in fact, but grumbled at its
size and its position. He would have liked this room or that. Why not
one at the end of this passage? He liked to be in a light passage.

"It is not a pleasant outlook this side, monsieur, stable roofs, a bare
wall and no garden."

"Truly, a prospect to drive a man to despair," growled Barrington,
looking from the passage window on to the roofs of outbuildings a few
feet below, and across at the house which these buildings joined, and
which was at the end of a row of houses facing the street. There was
only one window in that opposite wall, twelve or fourteen feet above
these outbuildings, a dirty window, fast shut.

"I think very little of Monsieur Legrand's asylum," said Barrington,
turning away in disgust. "I shall tell him so."

"Certainly, monsieur, if it will ease your mind."

"He is out, you say?"

"Since early this morning."

"He ought to stop here and look after his guests," and then Barrington
became apprehensive. "He would be angry if I told him so. Would he?"

"He might."

"Or if you told him I had said so?"

"Probably."

"You must not tell him. See, here