Afterwards Miss Preen set out for the casino, expecting she should meet them both there; for Lavinia and Nancy had intended to go. Madame Carimon was not a subscriber, but she sometimes paid her ten sous and went in. It would be quite a pretty sight to-night--a children's dance. Lavinia soon joined some friends there, but the others did not come. At eight o'clock she was in the Rue Pomme Cuite, approaching Madame Carimon's. Pauline, in her short woollen petticoats, and shoeless feet thrust into wooden sabots, was splashing buckets of water before the door to scrub the pavement, and keeping up a screaming chatter with the other servants in the street, who were doing the same, Saturday-night fashion. Madame Carimon was in the salon, sitting idle in the fading light; her sewing lay on the table. Lavinia's eyes went round the room, but she saw no one else in it. "Mary, where is Nancy?" she asked, as Madame Carimon rose to greet her with outstretched hands. "I'm sure I don't know," answered Madame Carimon lightly. "She has not been here. Did you think she had?" "She dined here--did she not?" "What, Nancy? Oh no! I and Jules dined alone. He is out now, giving a French lesson. I have not seen Nancy since--let me see--since Thursday, I think; the day before yesterday." Lavinia Preen sat down, half-bewildered. She related the history of the evening. "It is elsewhere that Nancy is gone," remarked Madame Carimon. "Flore must have misunderstood her." Concluding that to be the case, and that Nancy might already be at home, Lavinia returned at once to the Petite Maison Rouge, Mary Carimon bearing her company in the sweet summer twilight. Lavinia opened the door with her latch-key. Flore had departed long before. There were three latch-keys to the house, Nancy possessing one of them. They looked into every room, and called out "Nancy! Nancy!" But she was not there. Nancy Preen had gone off with Captain Fennel by the six-o'clock train, en route for Dover, there to be converted into Mrs. Fennel. And had Nancy foreseen the terrible events and final crime which this most disastrous step would bring about, she might have chosen, rather than take it, to run away to the Protestant cemetery outside the gates of Sainteville, there to lay herself down to die. IV. "Where _can_ Nancy be?" Miss Preen spoke these words to Mary Carimon in a sort of flurry. After letting themselves into the house, the Petite Maison Rouge, and calling up and down it in vain for Nancy, the question as to where she could be naturally arose. "She must be spending the evening with the friends she stayed to dine with," said Madame Carimon. "I don't know where she would be likely to stay. Unless--yes--perhaps at Mrs. Hardy's." "That must be it, Lavinia," pronounced Madame Carimon. It was then getting towards nine o'clock. They set out again for Mrs. Hardy's to escort Nancy home. She lived in the Rue Lothaire; a long street, leading to the railway-station.