“My love, there has been but too much reason for my staying so long.” “But there was so much reason for your being at home! Henry, they have carried away my father.” Marie could not tell where they had taken him. She knew nothing of English law and justice. She had had no one to help her; for Price himself introduced the officers of justice; and Mrs. Price was so stiff and cold in her manner, that Marie was obliged to leave off appealing to her. All she knew was that some men walked in while her father was reading, and she writing; that they showed a paper which her father did not know the use of; searched every corner of the apartments, turning every article of furniture out of its place, and taking possession at last of a pocket-pistol, of beautiful workmanship, which M. Verblanc valued as the gift of an old military friend. M. Verblanc himself was also carried off, because he had not given notice to the magistrates of having come to live in this place. “How is this?” enquired Henry of Price who now entered the room. “The arrest of aliens, and the search for weapons, can legally take place only in the day time.” “They reckon it day time in this sort of thing till nine o’clock, and it wanted full ten minutes to nine when they came.” “What did you know about this before I went out?” enquired Henry, turning the light of the lamp full upon Price’s face. “Only what most lodging-house keepers know in these days. I was called upon to give an account in writing of all the aliens in my house.” Henry conjectured very truly that the Prices were at the bottom of the whole affair. Mrs. Price had a very vigorous imagination; and she had given out among her neighbours that M. Verblanc was certainly a man of high rank; that he scribbled over more writing paper than any body she ever saw, except the gentleman that called himself his son-in-law; and that the writing must be letters, because nobody ever knew what became of it, and he went out regularly once a day,—no doubt to the post-office, for he never was known to send letters there by any other hand. Marie was obliged to be comforted with the assurance that this arrest would be only a temporary inconvenience; that such things were constantly happening in these days; and that there was no doubt of her father’s being released the next morning. Henry would go at the earliest practicable hour, and he did not doubt of bringing M. Verblanc home with him.