This clenched the matter. Mademoiselle Dolfe was soft-hearted and sentimental. Even the books, and the perpetual adding-up of dinners and breakfasts, service, appartements, bougies, siphons, bouteilles, demi-bouteilles, and those fatal sundries which so fearfully swell an hotel bill—even this hard exercise of an exact science had not extinguished that vital spark of heavenly flame which Mademoiselle Dolfe called her soul. She had been betrothed herself, once upon a time, to the proprietor of a rival establishment, who had blighted her affections by proving inconstant to his affianced, and only too constant to the brandy-bottle. She had not forgotten that springtime of the heart, those halcyon summer evenings when she and her Gustave had walked hand-in-hand in the shadowy avenues across yonder bridge. She sighed, and looked at Lucius with the glance of compassion. ‘Would it be possible for you to give me half-an-hour’s quiet conversation at any time?’ asked Lucius pleadingly. ‘There is the evening,’ said Mademoiselle Dolfe. ‘My uncle is a severe sufferer from gout, and rarely leaves his room; but I do not think he would object to receive you in the evening for half an hour. He has all the old books of the hotel in his room—they are indeed his only library. When in want of a distraction he compares the receipts of past years with our present returns, or examines our former tariffs, with a view to any modification, the reduction or increase of our present charges. If you will call this evening at nine o’clock, monsieur, I will induce my uncle to receive you. His memory is extraordinary; and he may be able to recall events of which I, in my frivolous girlhood, took little notice.’ ‘I shall be eternally obliged to him, and to you, madame,’ said Lucius. ‘In the mean time, if you will kindly send a porter for my bag, which I left at the station, I will take up my abode here. I shall then be on the spot whenever Monsieur Dolfe may be pleased to receive me.’ ‘You will stay here to-night, monsieur?’ ‘Yes, I will stay to-night. Unhappily I must go on to Paris to-morrow morning.’ Mademoiselle Dolfe surveyed a table of numbers, and rang for a chambermaid. ‘Show this gentleman to number eleven,’ she said; and then, turning to Lucius, she added graciously, ‘It is an airy chamber, giving upon the river, monsieur, and has but been this instant vacated. I shall have a dozen applications when the next train from Dieppe comes in.’