ith my bill."

Madame de Fondege pointed to Mademoiselle Marguerite, and exclaimed:
"Wait, at least, until I am alone before you speak to me on business."

Madame Landoire shrugged her shoulders. "As if you were ever alone," she
growled. "I wish to put an end to this."

"Step into my room then, and we will put an end to it, and at once."

This opportunity to escape from Madame de Fondege must not be allowed
to pass; so Marguerite asked permission to withdraw, declaring, what was
really the truth, that she felt completely tired out. After receiving
a maternal kiss from her hostess, accompanied by a "sleep well, my dear
child," she retired to her own room. Thanks to Madame Leon's absence,
she found herself alone, and, drawing a blotting-pad from one of her
trunks, she hastily wrote a note to M. Isidore Fortunat, telling him
that she would call upon him on the following Tuesday. "I must be very
awkward," she thought, "if to-morrow, on going to mass, I can't find
an opportunity to throw this note into a letter-box without being
observed."

It was fortunate that she had lost no time, for her writing-case was
scarcely in its place again before Madame Leon entered, evidently out of
sorts. "Well," asked Marguerite, "did you see your friends?"

"Don't speak of it, my dear young lady; they were all of them away from
home--they had gone to the play."

"Ah?"

"So I shall go again early to-morrow morning; you must realize how
important it is."

"Yes, I understand."

But Madame Leon, who was usually so loquacious, did not seem to be in a
talkative mood that evening, and, after kissing her dear young lady, she
went into her own room.

"She did not succeed in finding the Marquis de Valorsay," thought
Marguerite, "and being in doubt as to the part she is to play, she feels
furious."

The young girl tried to sum up the impressions of the evening, and to
decide upon a plan of conduct, but she felt sad and very weary. She said
to herself that rest would be more beneficial than anything else, and
that her mind would be clearer on the morrow; so after a fervent prayer
in which Pascal Ferailleur's name was mentioned several times, she
prepared for bed. But before she fell asleep she was able to collect
another bit of evidence. The sheets on her bed were new.

If Marguerite had been born in the Hotel de Chalusse, if she had known a
father's and a mother's tender care from her infancy, if she had always
been protected by a larg