He looked at Madame and nodded with studied insolence by way of farewell. But she seemed to have forgotten his presence already. She sat upright and stiff in the high-backed chair, the silk of her gown falling in rigid folds around her, the darkness of her attire relieved by a white scarf round her shoulders. Her face was set and pale beneath the hard line of her white hair dressed in the mode of the past generation, her eyes stared, unseeing, before her. Leroux laughed once more--it was the scornful laugh of a hardened criminal for what he termed a white-livered beginner. Once more he shrugged his shoulders, then with a final muttered imprecation he stalked out of the hall. II The moment he had gone Madame pulled herself together with an almost superhuman effort of will; she shook herself free from the torpor which had momentarily paralysed her limbs, and, rising to her feet, she went quickly to the door which Leroux had left ajar. It had seemed to her that the moment when the man's shuffling footsteps began to resound against the marble floor of the hall, he had uttered an exclamation of surprise, and that exclamation from Leroux had at once been followed by another sound--one soft and mournful like a sigh. Less than five seconds later Madame was in the hall--just in time to see Fernande walking rapidly across it toward the monumental glazed doors which gave on the outside stairway and on the terraces. "Fernande," she called authoritatively, "where are you going?" Instinctively the young girl had paused when she heard her name, but it was only for an instant; the next she had resumed her quick walk, and had just reached the first glazed door when Madame overtook her and, without warning, seized her peremptorily by the wrist. "Where are you going, Fernande?" she reiterated harshly. The girl looked round at her somewhat wildly, then she made a vigorous effort to disengage her wrist. "I am going out, _ma tante_," she replied, with a quietude which in no way deceived Madame la Marquise. "Out?" queried Madame. "Whither?" "Into the garden, _ma tante_. The heat indoors is oppressive and...." "You lie, Fernande," broke in Madame curtly. "_Ma tante_...." "You lie. Tell me where you are going." Then, as the girl made no reply but drew up her slim, graceful figure to its full height and looked fearlessly into the austere face of Madame de Mortain, the latter continued sternly: "Did you see Leroux just now?" "Yes," replied Fernande quietly. "And you heard what he said just as he was leaving?" "Yes."