At any rate it was worth the trial. The baron waited until ten o'clock, the time Edgar's mother had agreed to go out walking with him. He sat beside the boy, paying no attention to his chatter and even glancing through the paper, though every now and then tossing the child a crumb of talk so as not to insult him. When the hour hand was at ten and the minute hand was just reaching twelve, he asked Edgar, as though suddenly remembering something, to do him a favor and run across to the next hotel and find out if his cousin, Count Rosny, had arrived. Delighted at last to be of service to his friend, the unsuspecting child ran off as fast as his legs would carry him, careering down the road so madly that people looked after him in wonder. Count Rosny, the clerk told him, had not arrived, nor had he even announced his coming. Edgar again made post haste back to bring this information to his friend. But where was his friend? Nowhere in the hall. Up in his room perhaps. Edgar dashed up the stairs and knocked at his door. No answer. He ran down again and searched in the music-room, the café, the verandas, the smoking room. In vain. He hurried to his mother's room to see if she knew anything about the baron. But she was gone, too. When finally, in his despair, he applied to the porter, he was told the two had gone out together a few minutes before. Edgar waited for their return patiently. He was altogether unsuspecting and felt quite sure that they would come back soon because the baron wanted to hear whether or not his cousin had arrived. However, long stretches of time went by, and gradually uneasiness crept upon him. Ever since the moment when that strange, seductive man had entered his little life, never as yet tinged by suspicion, the child had spent his days in one continual state of tension and tremulousness and confusion. Upon such delicate organisms as those of children every emotion impresses itself as upon soft wax. Edgar's eyelids began to twitch again, and he was already a shade or two paler. He waited and waited, patiently, at first, then in wild excitement, on the verge of tears. Yet no suspicion crept into his child's soul. So blindly trustful was he of his wonderful friend that he fancied there must have been some misunderstanding, and he tortured himself fearing he had not executed his commission properly. But, when they came home at last, how odd that they lingered at the threshold talking gaily without showing the faintest surprise and without, apparently, having missed him very much. "We went out expecting to meet you, Eddie," said the baron, forgetting to ask if the count had arrived. When Edgar, in consternation that they must have been looking for him on the way between the two hotels, eagerly asseverated that he had taken the straight road and questioned them about the direction they had gone, his mother cut him off short with, "All right, Edgar, all right. Children must be seen and not heard."