These gifts safely in his pocket, he began to stroll towards the railway station, whence the diligence started, slowly, as he had plenty of time. As he went he saw, in a shop window, a beautiful stick of olive wood, with an ebony crook. It was marked ten francs, and he coveted it greatly, but reflected with a sigh that having spent so much on others he could afford nothing for himself, for Godfrey was an unselfish soul. Instead he bought a collar of Swiss lace for Mrs. Parsons. Immediately after he left the lace shop he became aware that he was being shadowed. He heard no footfall, and he saw no one, but he _knew_ that this was so; he could feel it down his back, and in a cold wind which blew across his hands, as it had done always at the Villa Ogilvy séances. The road that he was following led across some public gardens beneath an avenue of trees, which, of course, at this time of the year, were leafless. This avenue was lighted here and there, and beneath one of the gas lamps Godfrey wheeled round to see Madame Riennes advancing on him out of the gloom. Her stout form padded forward noiselessly, except for the occasional crackle of a dead and frosted leaf beneath her foot. She wore a thick cloak of some sort with a black hood that framed her large, white face, making her look like a monk of the Inquisition as depicted in various old prints. Beneath the blackness of this hood and above the rigid line of the set mouth, stared two prominent and glowing eyes, in which the gaslight was reflected. They reminded Godfrey of those of a stalking cat in a dark room. Indeed, from the moment that he caught sight of them he felt like the mouse cowering in a corner, or like a bird in a tree fascinated by the snake that writhes towards it along the bough. “Ah, _mon petit_,” said Madame, in her thick, creamy voice, that seemed to emerge from her lower regions, “so I have found you. I was walking through the town and a notion came to me that you were here, a—what you call it?—instinct like that which make the dog find its master. Only I master and you dog, eh?” Godfrey tried to pull himself together, feeling that it would not be wise to show fear of this woman, and greeted her as politely as he could, taking off his hat with a flourish in the foreign fashion.