"Oh, thank you;" and he was preparing to re-enter his hansom.

"But I don't think you will see her to-day, sir."

"Why not?" turning half-round again.

"It is Mrs. Romer's wedding-day."

"_What?_"

That elderly female, who had been at one time a housemaid in Mr.
Harlowe's household, confided afterwards to her intimate friend, the
kitchenmaid next door, that she was so frightened at the way that
foreign-looking gentleman shouted at her, that she felt as if she should
have dropped. "Indeed, my dear, I was forced to go down and get a drop of
whisky the very instant he was gone, I felt so fluttered, like."

Monsieur Le Vicomte turned round to her, with his foot midway between the
pavement and the step of the hansom, and shouted at her again.

"_What_ did you say it was, woman?"

"Why, Mrs. Romer's wedding-day, to be sure, sir; and no such wonder after
all, I should say; and a lovely morning for the wedding it be, too."

Lucien D'Arblet put his hand vaguely up to his head, as though he had
received a blow; she had escaped him, then, after all.

"So soon after the old man's death," he murmured, half aloud; "who could
have expected it?"