necessity. A marchand! But a marchand of what? She had an
instinctive feeling that the people in the hotel were talking about
her and M. Lacordaire, and was therefore more than ever averse to
asking any one a question.

As she went up to the school the next afternoon, she walked through
more of the streets of Le Puy than was necessary, and in every
street she looked at the names which she saw over the doors of the
more respectable houses of business. But she looked in vain. It
might be that M. Lacordaire was a marchand of so specially high a
quality as to be under no necessity to put up his name at all. Sir
Hommajee Bommajee's name did not appear over any door in Bombay;--at
least, she thought not.

And then came the Saturday morning. "We shall be ready at two," she
said, as she left the breakfast-table; "and perhaps you would not
mind calling for Lilian on the way."

M. Lacordaire would be delighted to call anywhere for anybody on
behalf of Mrs. Thompson; and then, as he got to the door of the
salon, he offered her his hand. He did so with so much French
courtesy that she could not refuse it, and then she felt that his
purpose was more tender than ever it had been. And why not, if this
was the destiny which Fate had prepared for her?

Mrs. Thompson would rather have got into the carriage at any other
spot in Le Puy than at that at which she was forced to do so--the
chief entrance, namely, of the Hotel des Ambassadeurs. And what
made it worse was this, that an appearance of a special fate was
given to the occasion. M. Lacordaire was dressed in more than his