owever, I had more control, and I hastened to
answer, 'Yes, I suppose so,' as innocently as possible.

'He is at Bosost, in Spain. You knew that, I conclude?' she said, with a
certain sharpness. And she looked me in the face again very directly.

'Yes,' I answered, beginning to tremble.

'I suppose you have heard, too, that he--that he sometimes crosses
the border?' she continued in a low voice, but with a certain ring of
insistence in her tone. 'Or, if you have not heard it, you guess it?'

I was in a quandary, and grew, in one second, hot all over. Uncertain
what amount of knowledge I ought to admit, I took refuge in gallantry.

'I should be surprised if he did not,' I answered, with a bow, 'being,
as he is, so close, and having such an inducement to return, Madame.'

She drew a long, shivering sigh, at the thought of his peril, I fancied,
and she sat back against the wall. Nor did she say any more, though I
heard her sigh again. In a moment she rose.

'The afternoons are growing chilly,' she said; 'I will go in and see how
Mademoiselle is. Sometimes she does not come to supper. If she
cannot descend this evening, I am afraid that you must excuse me too,
Monsieur.'

I said what was right, and watched her go in; and, as I did so, I
loathed my errand, and the mean contemptible curiosity which it had
planted in my mind, more than at any former time. These women--I could
find it in my heart to hate them for their frankness, for their foolish
confidence, and the silly trustfulness that made them so easy a prey!

NOM DE DIEU! What did the woman mean by telling me all this? To meet
me in such a way, to disarm one by such methods, was to take an unfair
advantage. It put a vile--ay, the vilest--aspect, on the work I had to
do.

Yet it was very odd! What could M. de Cocheforet mean by returning so
soon, if M. de Cocheforet was here? And, on the other hand, if it was
not his unexpected presence that had so upset the house, what was the
secret? Whom had Clon been tracking? And what was the cause of Madame's
anxiety? In a few minutes I began to grow curious again; and, as the
ladies did not appear at supper, I had leisure to give my brain full
licence, and, in the course of an hour, thought of a hundred keys to the
mystery. But none exactly fitted the lock, or laid open the secret.

A false alarm that evening helped to puzzle me still more. I was sitting
about an hour after supper, on the same seat in the garden--I had