-place, and whither he had promised to bring Mme. Acquet.

Six weeks previously, when quitting Falaise on the 23d August, after the
examination to which Caffarelli had subjected her, Mme. Acquet, still
ignorant of her mother's arrest, had proposed going to Tournebut, in
order to hide there for some time before starting for Paris, where she
hoped to find Le Chevalier. She had with her her third daughter,
Celine, a child of six years, whom she counted on getting rid of by
placing her at the school kept at Rouen by the ladies Dusaussay, where
the two elder girls already were. They were accompanied by Chauvel's
sister, a woman named Normand.

She went first to Caen where she was to take the diligence, and lodged
with Bessin at the Coupe d'Or in the Rue Saint-Pierre. Chauvel came
there the following day to say good-bye to his friend and they dined
together. While they were at table, a man, whom the gendarme did not
know, entered the room and said a few words to Mme. Acquet, who went
into the adjoining room with him. It was Lemarchand, the innkeeper at
Louvigny, Allain's host and friend. Chauvel grew anxious at this private
conversation, and seeing the time of the diligence was approaching,
opened the door and warned Mme. Acquet that she must get ready to start.
To his great surprise, she replied that she was no longer going, as
important interests detained her in Caen. She begged him to escort the
woman Normand and the little girl to the coach, and gave him the address
of a lawyer in Rouen with whom the child could be left. The gendarme
obeyed, and when he went back to the Coupe d'Or an hour later, his
mistress had left. He returned sadly to Falaise.

Lemarchand, who had been informed of Mme. Acquet's journey, came to tell
her, from Allain, that "a lodging had been found for her where she would
be secure, and that, if she did not wish to go, she had only to come to
the Promenade Saint-Julien at nightfall, and some one would meet her and
escort her to her new hiding-place." It may well be that a threat of
denouncing her, if she left the country, was added to this obliging
offer. At any rate she was made to defer her journey. Towards ten
o'clock at night, according to Lemarchand's advice, she reached the
Promenade Saint-Julien alone, walked up and down under the trees for
some time, and seeing two men seated on a bench, she went and sat down
beside them. At first they eyed each other without saying a word; at
last, one of th