He had had no letter from the doctor since that first one received in New York. Indeed there had been no way for one to have reached him before his arrival in Havre, and he was not sure that the doctor knew in which steamer he was crossing. But Vane was anxious to get to Rennes. Instead of going up one side of the river and down the other by rail, he decided to make a cut across the country, so he took the ferry for Trouville. The place was full of people--people such as you find anywhere, people such as you might see in Newport or New York--and Vane hastened to leave it. He found a diligence driven by an old man in a blue blouse, that took the country people and their eggs and chickens to and from the market at Trouville, and retained a seat on the outside. They left the watering-place at sunset, and, after driving a few miles along the beach--the fashionable drive--by the painted pavilions and villas, they struck inland through the grass uplands still fragrant with the hay. I do not want to make anything tragic of Vane's arrival at Rennes. It was hardly that to him. He had taken the midnight mail from Caen after a six hours' journey in the sweet July evening; and when he arrived in Rennes in the morning his mother was dead and had been buried, and the priests in the great cathedral, even then, were saying masses for her soul. The old physician, like few physicians, but like all old Bretons, was an ardent Catholic, and had sought to secure to his patient one surreptitious chance of salvation before his heretic friend arrived. "Yes, my son," said he, "at the last she died, _tout doucement_, it is now three weeks. She never recovered herself, though I had the abbé with her and the Presence by her side. She never knew you or me, thou dost remember, and at the end she died silently, and spoke not at all. Ah! mon pauvre ami, quelle sainte femme!" cried the doctor, forgetting that he had never known Mrs. Vane in her right mind. The masses, thought Vane, would do no harm, and he stayed two or three weeks with Dr. Kérouec in his old house near Rennes. The doctor, though growing old, was very busy. He had numberless charitable meetings in the afternoons, and his practice took up the mornings. His evenings were usually passed with Vane and the abbé over tric-trac and boston. The doctor was the head of many benevolent clubs, "Sociétés de Consommation," and such like. He knew to a unit how many poor people had consumed the society's soup, for each of the past forty years, in Rennes, and seemed to derive much satisfaction from these figures and their annual increase. He never spoke again to Vane of the young lady with the dot, and it turned out that she had married M. le Vicomte's son.