“Or on what floor—her master’s apartments, or some other?” No. Her mother was talkative enough, sometimes, and she believed she knew little of it, and remembered yet less. “There was no other circumstance, then, of any importance, in the matter, which they were acquainted with?” None, she reluctantly said, after a minute’s reflection; and it was evident that, if it had been otherwise, she would have been eager enough to make the most of it: even the touch of English gold might have no power to make such a woman as Jeannette Deroux feel any sort of genial emotion, but it had at all events given the light of unsatisfied cupidity to her hard grey Normandy eye. Sir Godfrey descended alone, to find the urchins beginning rather to dread the impatience of their charge. The recent interview, making known little of any additional importance, at least convinced Sir Godfrey of the judiciousness of a step he had hitherto disliked, so long as it seemed possible that unexpected facts might appear from it—an examination for himself, namely, of the original record by the police, whose reputation for exactitude and acuteness was so proverbial. It now, indeed, assumed the air of a somewhat superfluous measure, when through all he had heard from these people, with no motive or means for deception, there did not show the slightest trace of anything unlike other disasters of the kind—of anything equivocal, anything suspicious. It was chiefly, therefore, with the wish for complete reassurance, and final dismissal of the unwelcome subject, that he turned again, on his way homeward, to the chief bureau of police which he had previously passed. He found prompt attendance there, on producing his passport, and the required volume, from under the head of “Conflagrations Domestiques,” soon lay open on a high desk before him at the point he was in search of, while the inspector turned the leaves slowly, reading aloud the passages he indicated, and which the peculiar style of French calligraphy did not tend to render lucid.