At this moment Madame Armand entered abruptly, and with a troubled air. "Madame la Marquise," she said, addressing Clemence with hesitation, "I am deeply pained with a message I have to convey to you." "What do you mean, madame?" "The Duke de Lucenay is below, just come from your house, madame." "La, how you frighten me! What's the matter?" "I do not know, madame; but M. de Lucenay has, he told me, some very distressing information to communicate to you. He learnt from the duchess, his lady, that you were here, and has come in great haste." "Distressing information!" said Madame d'Harville to herself; then she suddenly shrieked out, in agonised accents, "My daughter, my daughter, my daughter, perhaps! Oh, speak, madame!" "I do not know, your ladyship." "Oh, for mercy's sake--for mercy's sake, take me to M. de Lucenay!" cried Madame d'Harville, rushing out with a bewildered air, followed by Madame Armand. "Poor mother! She fears for her child!" said La Goualeuse, following Clemence with her eyes. "Oh, no, it is impossible! At the very moment when she was so benevolent and kind to me such a blow could not strike her! No, no; once again I say it is impossible!" CHAPTER XIII. THE FORCED FRIENDSHIP. We shall now conduct the reader to the house in the Rue du Temple, about three o'clock on the day in which M. d'Harville terminated his existence. At the time mentioned, the conscientious and indefatigable M. Pipelet sat alone in his lodge, occupied in repairing the boot which had, more than once, fallen from his hand during Cabrion's last attack; the physiognomy of the delicate-minded porter was dejected, and exhibited a more than usually melancholy air. All at once a loud and shrill voice was heard calling from the upper part of the house, exclaiming, in tones which reechoed down the staircase: "M. Pipelet! M. Pipelet! Make haste! Come up as fast as you can! Madame Pipelet is taken very ill!" "God bless me!" cried Alfred, rising from his stool. "Anastasie ill!" But, quickly resuming his seat, he said to himself, "What a simpleton I must be to believe such a thing! My wife has been gone out more than an hour! Ah, but may she not have returned without my observing it? Certainly, such a mode of proceeding would be somewhat irregular, but I am not the less bound to admit that it is possible." "M. Pipelet!" called out the up-stairs voice again. "Pray come as quickly as you can; I am holding your wife in my arms!" "Holloa!" said Pipelet, springing up abruptly. "Somebody got my wife in his arms!" "I really cannot manage to unlace Madame Pipelet's stays by myself!" screamed out the voice, in tones louder than before. These words perfectly electrified Alfred, and the blush of offended modesty empurpled his melancholy features. "Sir-r-r!" cried he in a stentorian voice, as he rushed frantically from his lodge. "Sir-r-r! I adjure you, in the name of Honour, to leave my wife and her stays alone! I come! I come!"