fraternity in France, and behold! another was set over him and probably
reported that he neglected the business to pay court to a married woman.
He felt that he was lost and that his only chance to secure the beloved
one was to step outside the circle which he knew would be the vortex of
a whirlpool once war was proclaimed.

"You speak most timely," he answered gravely, when she said that she was
ready; "I have been notified to transfer the funds to another, in such
terms as would better suit a clerk than a gentleman--a noble
intelligence officer. That cursed major who learned the piano to be a
means of torture to his fellow man! he has done it. He loves you no
longer, and he is my enemy since I looked at him being run away with,
like a raw recruit, on his first troop-horse. He will, believe me, be
our destroyer unless we levant."

Nothing was easier. Since four days, Clemenceau had been invisible, even
at meals. Closeted with his disciple Antonino, they worked out some more
than ever preposterous conceptions into substance, in the studio where
the uncompleted artistic models had been neglected. Hedwig was the false
wife's bondwoman and would actively help in the removal of her trunks.
The viscount had but to send a trusty man with a vehicle, and the lady
could meet him at a station of the Outer Circle Railway and thence
proceed to a main station for Havre or Marseilles, as they selected. The
famous sight-drafts were safe on Gratian's person. With the simplicity
of a child, Césarine wished again and again to gloat over them; never
could she be convinced that those flimsy pieces of paper stood for large
sums of ready money and that bankers would pay simply on their
presentation. It was reluctantly that she restored the wallet to his
inner pocket, of which she buttoned the flap, bidding him be so very,
very careful of what would be their subsistence in the mango groves.