The porter now nodded, as solemnly as he had before shaken his head.

"Yes. This is the end of the house of Conti."

Then he looked at her as if he wished to be questioned, for he knew
that she was not really a great lady, and guessed that in spite of her
magnificent superiority and coldness she was not above talking to a
servant about her friends.

"But they must have somebody," she said. "They must eat, I suppose!
Somebody must cook for them. They cannot starve!"

"Who knows? Who knows? Perhaps they will starve."

The porter evidently took a gloomy view of the case.

"But why did the servants go away in a body?" asked the Baroness,
descending from her social perch by the inviting ladder of curiosity.

"They never were paid. None of us ever got our wages. For some time
the family has paid nobody. The day before yesterday, the telephone
company sent a man to take away the instrument. Then the electric
light was cut off. When that happens, it is all over."

The man had heard of the phenomenon from a colleague.

"And there is nobody? They have nobody at all?"

The Baroness had always been rich, and was really trying to guess what
would happen to people who had no servants.