ther of a very different sort had sprung into being. It fitted
a great many of the facts, it explained a great many contradictions,
anomalies, mysteries, and it accounted for Miss Vivian's insisting upon
her mother's leaving Blanquais at a few hours' notice, even better
than the theory of her resentment could have done. At any rate, it
obliterated Bernard's scruples very effectually, and led him on his
arrival in Paris to repair instantly to the Rue de Provence. This street
contains more than one banker, but there is one with whom Bernard deemed
Mrs. Vivian most likely to have dealings. He found he had reckoned
rightly, and he had no difficulty in procuring her address. Having done
so, however, he by no means went immediately to see her; he waited a
couple of days--perhaps to give those obliterated scruples I have spoken
of a chance to revive. They kept very quiet, and it must be confessed
that Bernard took no great pains to recall them to life. After he had
been in Paris three days, he knocked at Mrs. Vivian's door.

CHAPTER XXII

It was opened by the little waiting-maid whom he had seen at Blanquais,
and who looked at him very hard before she answered his inquiry.

"You see I have found Mrs. Vivian's dwelling, though you would n't give
me the address," Bernard said to her, smiling.

"Monsieur has put some time to it!" the young woman answered dryly. And
she informed him that Madame was at home, though Mademoiselle, for whom
he had not asked, was not.

Mrs. Vivian occupied a diminutive apartment at the summit of one of
the tall white houses which ornament the neighborhood of the Arc de
Triomphe. The early days of September had arrived, but Paris was still
a city of absentees. The weather was warm and charming, and a certain
savour of early autumn in the air was in accord with the somewhat
melancholy aspect of the empty streets and closed shutters of this
honorable quarter, where the end of the monumental vistas seemed to
be curtained with a hazy emanation from the Seine. It was late in
the afternoon when Bernard was ushered into Mrs. Vivian's little
high-nestling drawing-room, and a patch of sunset tints, faintly red,
rested softly upon the gilded wall. Bernard had seen these ladies only
in borrowed and provisional abodes; but here was a place where they were
really living and which was stamped with their tastes, their habits,
their charm. The little salon was very elegant; it contained a
multitude of pr