CHAPTER XL Six days had passed since Karen's disappearance. The country had been searched; London, still, was being examined, and the papers were beginning to break into portraits of the missing girl. Karen became remote, non-existent, more than dead, it seemed, when her face, like that of some heroine of a newspaper novelette, gazed at one from the breakfast-table. The first time that this happened, Madame von Marwitz, flinging the sheet from her, had burst into a violent storm of weeping. She sat, on the afternoon of the sixth day, in a sunny corner of the lower terrace and turned the leaves of a book with a listless hand. She was to be alone till dinner-time; Tallie had gone in to Helston by bus, and she had the air of one who feels solitude at once an oppression and a relief. She read little, raising her eyes to gaze unseeingly over the blue expanses stretched beneath her or to look down as vaguely into the eyes of Victor, who lay at her feet. The restless spirit of the house had reached Victor. He lay with his head on his extended paws in an attitude of quiescence; but his ears were pricked to watchfulness, his eyes, as he turned them now and again up to his mistress, were troubled. Aware of his glance, on one occasion, Madame von Marwitz stooped and caressed his head, murmuring: "_Nous sommes des infortunés, hein, mon chien._" Her voice was profoundly sad. Victor understood her. Slightly thudding his tail he gave a soft responsive groan; and it was then, while she still leaned to him and still caressed his head, that shrill, emphatic voices struck on Madame von Marwitz's ear. The gravelled nook where she sat, her garden chair, with its adjusted cushions, set against a wall, was linked by ascending paths and terraces to the cliff-path, and this again, though only through a way overgrown with gorse and bramble, to the public coast-guards' path along the cliff-top. The white stones that marked the way for the coast-guards made a wide _détour_ behind Madame von Marwitz's property and this nearer egress to the cliff was guarded by a large placard warning off trespassers. Yet, looking in the direction of the voices, Madame von Marwitz, to her astonishment, saw that three ladies, braving the interdict, were actually marching down in single file upon her.