e, looking her up and down.

"Why I want to know?" repeated Frau Krause, and tossed her head. "Why,
because I think if Herr Guest has any friends left, they ought to know
how he's going on--that's why, Fraulein!"

"How going on?" queried Madeleine with undisturbed coolness, and looked
round her for a chair.

Throwing a cautious glance over her shoulder, Frau Krause said behind
her hand: "It's my opinion there's a woman in the case."

"You don't need to whisper; your opinion is an open secret," answered
Madeleine drily. "There is a woman, and there she sits, as you no doubt
very well know." As she spoke, she pointed to a photograph of Louise,
which stood on the lid of the piano.

"I thought as much," exclaimed the landlady. "I thought as much. And a
bad, bold face it is, too."

"Now explain, please, what you mean by his goings on. Is he in debt to
you?" Madeleine continued her interrogatory.

"Well, I can't just say that," replied the woman, with what seemed a
spice of regret. "He's paid up pretty regular till now--though of
course one never knows how long he'll keep on doing it. But it goes
against my heart to see a young man, who might be one's own son, acting
as he does. When he first came here, there wasn't a decenter young man
anywhere than Herr Guest--if I had a complaint, it was that he was too
much of a steady-goer. I used to tell him he ought to take more heed
for his health, not to mention the ears of the people that had to live
with him. He sat at that piano there all the blessed day. And now there
isn't a lazier, more cantankerous fellow in the place. You can't please
him anyhow. He never gives you a civil word. He doesn't work, he
doesn't cat, and he's getting so thin that his clothes just hang on
him."

"Is he drinking?" interrupted Madeleine in the same matter-of-fact way,
with her eye on the main points of probable offence.

"Well, I can't just say that," answered Frau Krause. "Not but what it
mightn't be better if he was. It's the ones as don't drink who are the
hard ones to get on with, in my experience. Young gentlemen who like
their liquor, are of the goodnatured, easy-going sort. Now I once had a
young fellow here----"

"But I don't see in the least what you've got to complain of!" said
Madeleine. "He pays you for the room, and you no doubt have free use of
it.--A very good bargain!"

She sat back and stared about her, while Frau Krause, recognising that
she had met her match in this sh