‘He offered, of free will, to go in and out by the other stairs,’ interrupted Pouchée, adroitly. ‘He showed the finest, most delicate consideration. Since that first evening when Marjorie perceived his pipe our gentleman has not smoked. He goes out early. He does not return until he is worn out with work--such work as his is, too--at night!’ ‘Then it is impossible we can disturb him,’ exclaimed Marjorie, rising briskly from the table. ‘As a matter of architecture I am interested in the fourteenth-century stairs. The rooms they lead to must be equally curious. You need not chaperon me.’ She looked back at Pouchée across her shoulder. ‘I shall push back the mysterious red baize, and walk straight into Bluebeard’s chamber without knocking.’ And running up the stairs, she was about to put her threat into execution when Pouchée, by a dexterous flank movement, cut off her advance. ‘There may be a litter of papers. Grand ciel! there may be the bones, the skull.’ With her hands upon the lock, Mademoiselle Pouchée barred Marjorie’s progress by her own solid person; then, opening two inches of door, she peered in, cautiously. ‘No; we are in order. We have locked up our skeleton for once. You may enter, child--Barbe-bleu is not here to eat you.’ Marjorie Bartrand stopped short upon the threshold. Something in the meagrely furnished room, the piles of books, the small fireless grate, the absence of any pretence at decoration or cheerfulness, affected her strongly. She shrank from intruding, unbidden, on such valiantly borne poverty as was here in evidence before her. ‘And you have robbed him of Tintajeux Manoir!’ She glanced round at the bare, damp-stained walls. ‘Tintajeux at least gives one a notion of quick and wholesome air, of honest sunshine!’ ‘Our gentleman robbed himself. When I told him the morning after your arrival that you had asked for it, he took the photograph from his wall with his own hand.’ ‘And you can give him no other picture to fill its place?’ ‘He has a magnifique picture here, facing the window. See,’ Pouchée adjusted herself into a favourable light with an air of connoisseurship, ‘a magnifique portrait, just a little mildewed, of King William the Fourth. The fur on his Majesty’s cloak has been the admiration of many artists. Come in, ma mie, entrez. What are you afraid of?’ And Marjorie entered. She looked for a few seconds at the time-stained mezzotint which, with its black frame, its cheap glass, seemed but to make the wall whereon it hung more sorrowfully ugly. Then she crossed to the room’s one window--a diamond leaded casement through whose small dulled panes the side view of a crowded alley, of the corner of a still more crowded churchyard, was attainable. A ponderous book lay on a chair beside the window. Marjorie Bartrand lifted it. ‘Marjorie, I forbid you to touch a book! Our gentleman studies for medicine. Medical works are not for the perusal of young girls.’