outer boulevards.

Martial's thoughts were busy as he trotted along about a hundred yards
behind the vehicle.

"She is in a terrible hurry," he said to himself. "This, however, is
scarcely the quarter for a lover's rendezvous."

The carriage had passed the Place d'Italie. It entered the Rue du
Chateau-des-Rentiers and soon paused before a tract of unoccupied
ground.

The door was at once opened, and the Duchesse de Sairmeuse hastily
alighted.

Without stopping to look to the right or to the left, she hurried across
the open space.

A man, by no means prepossessing in appearance, with a long beard, and
with a pipe in his mouth, and clad in a workman's blouse, was seated
upon a large block of stone not far off.

"Will you hold my horse a moment?" inquired Martial.

"Certainly," answered the man.

Had Martial been less preoccupied, his suspicions might have been
aroused by the malicious smile that curved the man's lips; and had he
examined his features closely, he would perhaps have recognized him.

For it was Jean Lacheneur.

Since addressing that anonymous letter to the Duc de Sairmeuse, he had
made the duchess multiply her visits to the Widow Chupin; and each time
he had watched for her coming.

"So, if her husband decides to follow her I shall know it," he thought.

It was indispensable for the success of his plans that Mme. Blanche
should be watched by her husband.

For Jean Lacheneur had decided upon his course. From a thousand schemes
for revenge he had chosen the most frightful and ignoble that a brain
maddened and enfevered by hatred could possibly conceive.

He longed to see the haughty Duchesse de Sairmeuse subjected to the
vilest ignominy, Martial in the hands of the lowest of the low. He
pictured a bloody struggle in this miserable den; the sudden arrival
of the police, summoned by himself, who would arrest all the parties
indiscriminately. He gloated over the thought of a trial in which the
crime committed at the Borderie would be brought to light; he saw the
duke and the duchess in prison, and the great names of Sairmeuse and of
Courtornieu shrouded in eternal disgrace.

And he believed that nothing was wanting to insure the success of his
plans. He had at his disposal two miserable wretches who were capable
of any crime; and an unfortunate youth named Gustave, made his willing
slave by poverty and cowardice, was intended to play the part of
Marie-Anne's son.

These three accomplices h