Again I listened, but as I did so the woman entered, and then, taking leave of her, the two men went forth and down the stairs. In an instant I resolved to follow them, and ere they had gained the entrance-hall I had put on my hat and descended. They took a cab, and first drove up the hill behind St. Lazare to the Boulevard des Batignolles, descending before a large house where, from an old concierge in slippers, Ernest received two letters. Both men stood in the door-way and read the communications through. From their faces I could see that the letters contained serious news, and for some minutes they stood in indecision. At length, however, they re-entered the cab and drove back past the Opera, through the Rue Rivoli, and across the Pont des Arts, turning into a labyrinth of narrow, dirty streets beyond the Seine, and stopping before a small, uninviting-looking hairdresser’s shop. They were inside for some ten minutes or so, while I stood watching a short distance off, my head turned away, so that they should not recognize me if they came forth suddenly. When they emerged they were laughing good-humoredly, accompanied to the door by a rather well-dressed man, evidently a hairdresser, for a comb protruded from his pocket and his hair was brushed up in that style peculiar to the Parisian coiffeur. “Good-day, messieurs,” he said in French, bowing them into the fiacre, “I understand quite clearly. There is nothing to fear, I assure you, absolutely nothing.” In that man’s dark eyes, as he stood watching the cab turning, was a strange, intense look which struck me as familiar. Yes, I had seen those eyes before, without a doubt. His face was triangular, with broad forehead and pointed chin--a rather curious personality. Again I looked at his peculiarly brilliant eyes, and a strange truth flashed suddenly upon me. Yes, I remembered that curious expression quite distinctly; it had riveted itself indelibly upon my memory. He was the man who had worn the owl’s dress in Carnival--the man who had returned to me the notes stolen from poor Reggie! He was an accomplice of these two men, of whom I had never entertained suspicion. The truth came to me as a staggering blow. Ernest was an assassin! Had he not admitted how near he had been to arrest and congratulated himself upon his escape? Had not old Keppel aided him by concealing him on board the Vispera? Once, alas! I had, in my foolish, rosy days of youth, believed in the man who had made love to me, who had flattered and caressed me, and who had declared that I should be his always. Ah! how well I remembered it! How bitterly all the past came back to me! And yet, until that very hour of my discovery that he was an assassin, I had never ceased to love him--never for a single instant. We women are indeed strange creatures.