himself from the block which traffic so frequently causes hereabouts, and whipping up his horse once more turned literally at a gallop up the Rue du Vieux Colombier--leading into the Place St. Sulpice. Thence he took the shortest cut to gain the outer boulevards. Martial’s thoughts were busy as he trotted along a hundred yards or so behind the vehicle. “She’s in a terrible hurry,” he said to himself. “But this is scarcely the quarter for a lover’s rendezvous.” The cab had indeed now reached the squalid region extending beyond the Place d’Italie. It turned into the Rue du Chateau-des-Rentiers and soon drew up before a tract of waste ground. The Duchess de Sairmeuse then hastily alighted, and, without stopping to look to the right or to the left, hurried across the open space. Martial had prudently paused in the rear. Not far from him he espied a man sitting on a block of stone and apparently immersed in the task of colouring a clay-pipe. “Will you hold my horse a moment?” inquired Martial. “Certainly,” answered the man, rising to his feet. He wore a workman’s blouse and a long beard, and his aspect altogether was scarcely prepossessing. Had Martial been less pre-occupied, his suspicions might have been aroused by the malicious smile that curved the fellow’s lips; and had he scrutinized him closely, he would perhaps have recognized him. For the seeming vagrant was Jean Lacheneur. Since forwarding that anonymous letter to the Duke de Sairmeuse, he had compelled the Duchess to multiply her visits to the Widow Chupin’s den, and on each occasion he had watched for her arrival. “So, if her husband decides to follow her I shall know it,” he thought. It was indispensable for the success of his plans that Blanche should be watched by her husband. For from among a thousand schemes of revenge, Jean had chosen the most frightful his fevered brain could conceive. He longed to see the haughty Duchess de Sairmeuse subjected to the vilest ignominy, and Martial in the hands of the lowest of the low. He pictured a bloody struggle in this miserable den; the sudden arrival of the police, summoned by himself, and the indiscriminate arrest of all the parties present. He gloated over the thought of a trial in which the crime committed at the Borderie would be brought to light; he saw the duke and the duchess in prison, and the great names of Sairmeuse and Courtornieu shrouded in eternal disgrace. And he believed that nothing was wanting to ensure the success of his plans. He had two miserable wretches who were capable of any crime at his disposal; and an unfortunate youth named Gustave, whom poverty and cowardice had made his willing slave, was intended to play the part of Marie-Anne’s son. These three accomplices had no suspicions of Lacheneur’s real intentions, while, as for the Widow Chupin and her son, if they suspected some infamous plot all they really knew in regard to it was the duchess’s name. Moreover, Jean held Polyte and his mother