argument evidently found no acceptance with Monsieur Robert Darzac.
He continued to pay his court--if the delicate and tender attention
with which he ceaselessly surrounded this woman of five-and-thirty
could be called courtship--in face of her declared intention never
to marry.

Suddenly, some weeks before the events with which we are occupied,
a report--to which nobody attached any importance, so incredible
did it sound--was spread about Paris, that Mademoiselle Stangerson
had at last consented to "crown" the inextinguishable flame of
Monsieur Robert Darzac! It needed that Monsieur Robert Darzac
himself should not deny this matrimonial rumour to give it an
appearance of truth, so unlikely did it seem to be well founded.
One day, however, Monsieur Stangerson, as he was leaving the Academy
of Science, announced that the marriage of his daughter and Monsieur
Robert Darzac would be celebrated in the privacy of the Chateau du
Glandier, as soon as he and his daughter had put the finishing
touches to their report summing up their labours on the "Dissociation
of Matter." The new household would install itself in the Glandier,
and the son-in-law would lend his assistance in the work to which
the father and daughter had dedicated their lives.

The scientific world had barely had time to recover from the effect
of this news, when it learned of the attempted assassination of
Mademoiselle under the extraordinary conditions which we have
detailed and which our visit to the chateau was to enable us to
ascertain with yet greater precision. I have not hesitated to
furnish the reader with all these retrospective details, known to
me through my business relations with Monsieur Robert Darzac. On
crossing the threshold of The Yellow Room he was as well posted