Among the groups assembled to see the voyagers alight was a white-haired woman, respectably but plainly dressed in black. She watched the passengers alighting one by one, until her eye fell upon a sinister-looking individual smoking, with serene defiance of the elements, a clay pipe. She at once greeted him by name, and, leading him aside, accosted him in French. ‘What! do you come alone? Where are those in your charge?’ ‘Calm yourself, madame,’ said the man with gruff politeness. ‘I shall fulfil my contract. They would not cross in such weather.’ ‘But they remain?’ ‘Safe in the charge of my wife, at Folkestone. You will find two of them charming; the third not so good-looking, but _très gentille_. As I wrote you, one is a domestic servant, another a tradesman’s runaway daughter, the third a figurante of the theatre. They all seek situations, which I have promised them, as you are aware.’ ‘But do they understand? With the last there was a scandal, and I want no more trouble.’ ‘Trust my wife, madame; there will be no difficulty. As usual, when they find themselves under your kind care, they will behave discreetly.’ At this juncture Gavrolles crawled up the gangway, the picture of misery and collapse. No sooner did the woman espy him than she uttered an exclamation. ‘I see another friend!’ she exclaimed to her companion. ‘Go on to my house, and await me there.’ Gavrolles, followed by a porter carrying his portmanteau, elbowed his way along the pier. Suddenly he felt a touch upon his arm, and, turning sharply, saw the woman. ‘Well met, Belleisle!’ she said with a grim smile and a not too amiable compression of the lips. So worn and washed out was the cosmic creature that at the first glance he failed to recognise his old companion, Madame de Fontenay. ‘What!’ she exclaimed. ‘Do you forget me?’ At last, his glazed and fish-like countenance expressed a dim and irritated recognition. ‘Is it you, Madame Louise?’ ‘Yes; it is I!--And you? It is many a long day since we met, though I have often inquired after you in vain. You are a sly rascal, Belleisle; you forget old friends, old services, old debts. Ah! but _I_ remember.’ ‘I have been in England,’ replied Gavrolles, surveying her with strong dislike. ‘Ah, yes, so I heard. Have you been fortunate there, _mon ami?_’ ‘On the contrary. But you? You live here?’ ‘Yes,’ said the woman. ‘You follow the old trade, madame?’ The woman nodded, and the two passed on in conversation. Gavrolles did not look back, or he would have seen, still watching him with curiosity, the two men who had followed him from Charing Cross. Gavrolles slept that night in the Hôtel de Rouen, a chilly place, half-hotel, half-prison, in a back street of Boulogne. Here he had the pleasure of meeting two or three gentlemen of his acquaintance, who earned their money at the card table and in the billiard room, and spent it in dingy dissipation, like cavaliers of pleasure.