his eye on the flat for her before Mrs. Carlos Smith took it, and had
hesitated on account of its drawbacks, she was even more proud. And
reassured also. For this detail was a proof that Gilbert had really
had the intention to put her "among her own furniture" long before the
night of the supreme appeal to him.... Only he was always so cautious.

And Gilbert was the discoverer of la mère Gaston, too, and as frank
about her as about the flat. La mère Gaston was the widow of a French
soldier, domiciled in London previous to the war, who had died of
wounds in one of the Lechford hospitals; and it was through the
Lechford Committee that Gilbert had come across her. A few weeks
earlier than the beginning of the formal liaison Mrs. Braiding
had fallen ill for a space, and Madame Gaston had been summoned as
charwoman to aid Mrs. Braiding's young sister in the Albany flat. With
excellent judgment Gilbert had chosen her to succeed Marthe, whom he
himself had reproachfully dismissed from Cork Street.

He was amazingly clever, was Gilbert, for he had so arranged things
that Christine had been able to cut off her Cork Street career as with
a knife. She had departed from Cork Street with two trunks and a few
cardboard boxes--her stove was abandoned to the landlord--and vanished
into London and left no trace. Except Gilbert, nobody who knew her in
Cork Street was aware of her new address, and nobody who knew her
in Mayfair knew that she had come from Cork Street. Her ancient
acquaintances in Cork Street would ring the bell there in vain.

Madame Gaston was a neat, plump woman of perhaps forty, not looking
her years. She had a comprehending eye. After three words from Gilbert
she had mastered the situation, and as she perfectly realised where
her interest lay she could be relied upon for discretion. In all