"Barbara," said I, "sent you her very dear love."

She nodded, without looking at me.

"Barbara would have come too, if Susan had not been ill."

She gave a little start. I thought she was about to speak; but she
remained silent. We entered the customs-shed, when she attended
mechanically to her declarations.

On emerging free into the open air again, we found that the cheery sun
had pierced the morning clouds and gave promise of a glorious day. The
luggage was piled on the hotel omnibus. We took an open cab and rattled
through the narrow flag-paved streets of the harbour quarter of the
town. As we emerged into a more spacious thoroughfare, suddenly from a
gaudy column at the corner flared the name of Ras Fendihook. I caught
the heading of the _affiche_: "Music-Hall-Eldorado." Part of the mystery
was solved. Jaffery had been right in his deduction that he had left
London on a professional engagement; but we had not thought of an
engagement out of England. I had a correct answer now to my question:
"Why Havre of all places?" Jaffery sitting with Liosha on the back seat
of the victoria saw it too and we exchanged glances. But Liosha had eyes
for nothing save her hands tightly clasped in her lap. We passed another
column before we entered the Place Gambetta, where already at that early
hour, above its wide terrace, the striped awning of Tortoni's was flung.
We alighted at the hotel and ordered our three rooms; coffee and roll to
be taken up to madame; we men would eat our petit dejeuner downstairs.
Liosha left us without saying a word.

Bathed, shaved, changed, refreshed by the good _cafe au lait_, gladdened
by the sunshine and smugly satisfied with our morning's work, quite a
different Hilary Freeth sat with Jaffery on the terrace from the
sleepless wreck he had awakened two hours before. My urbane dismissal of
Ras Fendihook lingered suave in my memory. The glow of conscious heroism
warmed me, even like last night's dinner, to sympathy with my kind.
After despatching, by the chasseur, a long telegram to Barbara, and
sending up to Liosha's room a bunch of red roses we bought at a
florist's hard by, I surrendered myself idly to the contemplation of the
matutinal Sunday life of provincial France, while Jaffery smoked his
pipe and uttered staccato maledictions on Mr. Ras Fendihook.

I love provincial France. It is narrow, it is bourgeois, it is regarding
of its _sous_, it is what you will. But it lives a spacious,
ou