for a little time, then, recovering some vivacity, she inquired
hesitatingly as though she was never at her ease with the subtle woman.

"Is madame going away without more than a glance around?"

"Why do you talk such nonsense?" queried her mistress, looking up
abruptly.

The girl intimated that the mysterious entrance portended secrecy to be
preserved. And, again, the lady had come without baggage, even so much
as in eloping from home. But Madame Clemenceau explained, with the most
natural air in the world, that she had walked over from the railway
station, where her impedimenta remained.

"Walked half a mile?" ejaculated Hedwig, who knew that the speaker had
been vigorous enough at Munich, but, since her marriage, and living at
Montmorency, she had assumed the popular air of a semi-invalid, "So you
are strong in health again?"

"Yes; but I have been very unwell," replied the lady, sinking back in
the chair as she remembered the course she had intended to adopt. "I was
very nearly at death's door," she sighed. "I really believed that I
should nevermore see any of you, my poor husband and you others. Do you
think that anything hut a severe ailment could excuse me for my strange
silence--my apparently wicked absence?"

Hedwig went on going through the form of dusting the huge metal-bound
chest, which had attracted the mistress' eyes as a new article of
furniture. Had her husband turned miser since Fortune had whirled on her
wheel at his door as soon as she quitted it? It was not Hedwig's place,