The young man assumed a still more despairing look as he looked in the other’s face and announced: “My dear Bob, I must tell you all; Nini Guinon is _enceinte_.” Ascott looked so crestfallen that, for all his phlegm, Tom Bob all but burst out laughing. However, he dissembled his feelings with wonderful self-restraint; rising, he stepped up to the young Englishman with an air of heartfelt sympathy and pressed his hand. “My dear sir,” he declared, “you are a good and honest man!” But Ascott had no illusions. “Or an idiot!” he groaned. A silence followed, which the detective broke to say: “You will please excuse me, I must be going,” adding with a spice of irony: “I won’t press you to have breakfast with me; I take it that after the wedding, a reception ...” “No!” Ascott interrupted, “don’t make fun of me, Tom Bob; the ceremony will be strictly private; naturally it does not call for any festivities; the mother, who has to signify her consent, only comes to the _Mairie_ and to church, and I have definitely refused to invite to the breakfast anyone whatsoever besides the witnesses.” “And you start, no doubt, on your wedding trip afterwards?” “That is to say,” returned the young man, “I take to my heels, I go away to hide myself, also I go in order to try and get my wife away from the deplorable associations connected with her family and relations.” As he reached the door Tom Bob turned for a last good-bye to his host: “As a matter of fact,” he questioned, “do you love her?” “No!” replied the rich Englishman gloomily. But, modifying his statement and blushing to the roots of his hair, he added: “Still, I am bound to confess, there is something makes her not indifferent to me.” Tom Bob raised his hand as if to invoke heaven, and in a thrilling voice: “The child, perhaps ...” he suggested. “Yes, that is it,” Ascott agreed, and hurrying over the good-byes, he returned to his working-table, while the detective took his departure. * * * * * At the far end of the Bois de Vincennes, near the Saint-Mandé boundary of the park, is to be found, standing among trees, a restaurant of quite a rural aspect, and bearing the significant name of _The Orange Blossom_. Within are a number of vast rooms and outside in the gardens arbours of the like ample proportions. It is here in fact that the democracy resorts to make merry on the occasion of weddings after the religious or civil ceremonies, sometimes one, sometimes the other, occasionally both, have been rapidly despatched. This morning evidently the landlord of _The Orange Blossom_ was not expecting any great number of customers, for he had thrown open only the smallest of his salons. In the middle of the room he was laying the table for a very limited number of guests: