A superb limousine had drawn up at the back of the restaurant of _The Orange Blossom_. It was about four of the afternoon: the breakfast had resolved itself into a drunken debauch, a horrid uproar of ribald songs disturbed the quiet of the establishment. Bouzille was the noisiest of them all; the wine bottles had been left on the table at the end of the meal, in an hour’s time they had to be replaced. Ascott, heedless of the whole riot, had paid without a murmur. Ten minutes ago Nini Guinon, at Moche’s urgent suggestion, had gone to join her husband, who had spent a strange afternoon for a bridegroom, shut up alone in a room on the first floor, anxiously awaiting, not so much the return of his wife, as the arrival of the motor-car he had ordered, eager to escape from Paris with all speed and hide himself and his intolerable situation in some remote corner of the provinces. Hardly had Nini appeared, all flushed and excited, before Ascott, looking her coldly up and down, ordered her: “Put on your hat, we are going.” Furious at bottom to be so treated, but scared by her husband’s manner, and also remembering old Moche’s counsels, she obeyed, muttering curses under her breath; “He shall pay me for this, come the day I can bring him to heel.” Hastily she put on a long dust-cloak, settled her hat in place and followed her husband and the two, without a word of good-bye to anyone, got into the car, which started away at once. Père Moche, however, had run up hastily to see the last of them; with a wave of the hand he bade farewell to the newly-wed pair, a broad, ironical smile on his lips. But suddenly he started back. An explosion had rung out, half an inch more and Père Moche would have received a bullet full in the face. Luckily he had foreseen the shot and ducked in time. With amazing agility, Moche sprang at his assailant, whom he hurled to the ground, keeping him down with a knee pressed hard on the fellow’s chest. “Brigand! scoundrel! I don’t know what stops me from killing you here and now!” Who was this man Père Moche had mastered so adroitly? No other than Paulet, Nini Guinon’s lover, the white-faced, pale-eyed scamp who had assuredly been completely sacrificed in the old usurer’s sinister machinations. With calm ferocity the latter was now brandishing the revolver he had snatched from the apache’s hands. “One word, one movement,” he declared, “and I blow your brains out, as you tried to blow out mine the day of the bank messenger’s death. Villain! murderer! Remember I hold your life in my hands, that I can do for you where I choose and when I choose.” “Scoundrel!” vociferated Paulet, “you’ve robbed me of my doxy, what d’you think is to become of me now?” “Fool! she wanted to be done with you!” “Ah! if you hadn’t hid her away, you old rascal, if only I could have seen her!”