presently, with an air of empressement:

"Monsieur, my friends, I am in the hands of fate. I am dumb. Fate
speaks for me. But we shall know each other better; and I trust you,
who, as Frenchmen, descended from a better day in France, will not betray
me. Let us be patient till Destiny strikes the hour." Now for the first
time to-day Valmond saw Madame Chalice.

She could have done no better thing to serve him than to hold out her
hand, and say in her clear tones, which had, too, a fascinating sort of
monotony:

"Monsieur, if you are idle Friday afternoon, perhaps you will bestow on
me a half-hour at the Manor; and I will try to make half mine no bad
one."

He was keen enough to feel the delicacy of the point through the deftness
of the phrase; and what he said and what he did now had no pose, but
sheer gratitude. With a few gracious words to Medallion, she bowed and
drove away, leaving Valmond in the midst of an admiring crowd.

He was launched on an adventure as whimsical as tragical, if he was an
impostor; and if he was not, as pathetic as droll. He was scarcely
conscious that Parpon walked beside him, till the dwarf said:

"Hold on, my dauphin, you walk too fast for your poor fool."