g. It drew up with a clatter before the
fencing-academy. Could it be Andre-Louis returning? Passionately she
snatched at that straw of hope. Knocking, loud and urgent, fell upon the
door. She heard Andre-Louis' housekeeper, her wooden shoes clanking upon
the stairs, hurrying down to open.

She sped to the door of the anteroom, and pulling it wide stood
breathlessly to listen. But the voice that floated up to her was not the
voice she so desperately hoped to hear. It was a woman's voice asking in
urgent tones for M. Andre-Louis--a voice at first vaguely familiar, then
clearly recognized, the voice of Mme. de Plougastel.

Excited, she ran to the head of the narrow staircase in time to hear
Mme. de Plougastel exclaim in agitation:

"He has gone already! Oh, but how long since? Which way did he take?"

It was enough to inform Aline that Mme. de Plougastel's errand must be
akin to her own. At the moment, in the general distress and confusion
of her mind, her mental vision focussed entirely on the one vital
point, she found in this no matter for astonishment. The singular regard
conceived by Mme. de Plougastel for Andre-Louis seemed to her then a
sufficient explanation.

Without pausing to consider, she ran down that steep staircase, calling:

"Madame! Madame!"

The portly, comely housekeeper drew aside, and the two ladies faced each
other on that threshold. Mme. de Plougastel looked white and haggard, a
nameless dread staring from her eyes.

"Aline! You here!" she exclaimed. And then in the urgency sweeping aside
all minor considerations, "Were you also too late?" she asked.

"No, madame. I saw him. I implored him. But he would not listen."

"Oh, this is horrible!" Mme. de Plougastel shuddered as she spoke. "I
heard of it only half an hour ago, and I came at once, to prevent it at
all costs."

The two women looked blankly, despairingly, at each other. In the
sunshine-flooded street one or two shabby idlers were pausing to eye
the handsome equipage with its magnificent bay horses, and the two great
ladies on the doorstep of the fencing-academy. From across the way came
the raucous voice of an itinerant bellows-mender raised in the cry of
his trade:

"A raccommoder les vieux soufflets!"

Madame swung to the housekeeper.

"How long is it since monsieur left?"

"Ten minutes, maybe; hardly more." Conceiving these great ladies to
be friends of her invincible master's latest victim, the good woman
preserved a dec