As I turned round and took my first step back to the drawing-room, the manager exploded like a thousand bombs. How the Grey One managed to stand unconsumed amidst those lightnings of wrath and thunderings of menace, I can’t conceive. As to his past, the Grey One learned that he was directly descended from a long line of cads, rogues, gaol-birds, and impostors; and as to his future, it appeared that the greater part of it (after he had been soundly kicked, thrashed, and horse-whipped) was to be spent in a French prison. While this fiery storm was blazing and smashing around his grey cloth cap, I neither saw Mr. John Lamb, of Phipps Brothers, nor heard him. He took it lying down. In the end, it turned out that Mr. Lamb was possessed of an English sovereign and the return half of a week-end ticket as well as his twenty-four francs. He paid; and was flung forth into the sunshine with just enough to face Madame Legendre and to keep himself alive until the boat starts for England, in the dark and the cold, a little after midnight. From his final and ardent, but fruitless, plea that the manager should accept the deposit of his watch and ring, and allow him to send a post-office order from England to redeem them, I gathered that this was Mr. Lamb’s first visit to France; that he has got leave from Phipps Brothers till Wednesday morning; and that Mrs. Lamb doesn’t expect him back to Amelia Road until Tuesday night. I’m sick of writing about the creature, so I’ll stop. Yet, if I chance to wake up about three o’clock to-morrow morning, with the air nipping and the wind blustery and the moon overcast, I’m not sure that I sha’n’t think of Mr. John Lamb, and feel just a tiny, wee bit sorry for him. *BOOK III* *SAINTE VÉRONIQUE* *TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE* Some of the Letters printed in Book III. are found in the MS. of the Diary only in abridgments, and one is missing altogether. The Transcriber has copied them from the originals _in extenso_, and has inserted them in their proper places. *BOOK III* _Monday_, 4 _p.m._ At last! It’s like coming home. I’m in my dear old room; with the front window looking over the beck and the willows to the sea, and the side window opening on the orchard. The trees have grown since last year; and, if I leaned out far enough, there are three rosy apples that I could pluck straight from the branch as it sways in the soft wind. The Dupoiriers are delighted I’ve come. Poor things, considering the gorgeous summer, they haven’t been doing over well. Yet the hotel is sweeter than ever. Those stuffy velvet curtains, that I always loathed, have been taken out of the salon. It was a bit of a shock to see the summer-house stripped of creepers and painted white: but, if it’s less picturesque, it is also more possible. Last year I didn’t dare to sit in it because of the earwigs.