"I have two hundred thousand francs, that is, nearly as many marks, coming from my good uncle who is a little late in doing me a kindness--but my attention touched him. But do I not hear steps--somebody at last moving in the house?" "Very likely," replied the servant tranquilly, "but nobody will come in here, before master has breakfast. Since he stores his secrets in that chest, and no company drops in, this is a hermitage. Mademoiselle Rebecca is not one of the prying sort." Madame Clemenceau, who had risen with more nervous anxiety than she cared to display to the servants, stood by her chair, looking toward the door. "Has he talked about me, sometimes?" "Master? never--not before me, anyway, madame." "Yet you gave him the telegram that explained all?" "Yes, madame; but not until some time after your departure and when master had returned from a promenade alone. I know he was alone, because M. Antonino was racing about to show him some of his wonderful experiments." Beyond a doubt, it was Clemenceau who had stood witness to the tragedy in the meadow. Hence his inattention to the Russian's despatch, which he naturally would disbelieve, and probably to her prolonged absence. It was humiliating that he had not searched for her. "What! no allusion to my stay--no hint of my possible return?" "His silence has been perfect as the grave. Next morning after you left and did not return, master looked at the cover which I had from habit placed for you, and remarked: 'Oh, by the way, you will have another to lay to-morrow, as we shall have two guests for, I hope, a long time.' He meant the Danielses, madame. Their coming made it a little livelier for him and M. Antonino." "It looks like a plot," murmured Césarine, indignantly, as she pictured the happy reunions out of which she had been displaced in memory--not even her untouched plate left as memento! her chair taken by Rebecca Daniels! "Mr. Daniels is like M. Antonino, too!" continued Hedwig. "Not only is he getting up the company for the master's inventions, but for the young gentleman's--he has made such a marvel of a rifle--they put a tin box into it, and lo! you can fire three hundred shots as quick as a wink! I walk in terror since I heard of it! and I touch things as if they would go off and make mince-meat of me in the desert to it." "Never mind that!" cried Madame Clemenceau, testily. "Although the connection between piping at music halls and enchanting the bulls and bears of the Bourse is not clear to me, I can understand how M. Daniels, as a financial agent, should be lodging under our roof, but his daughter--" "She is our housekeeper, and, to tell the plain truth, madame, we have lived nicely, although money was scarce, since she ruled the roost. Ah, these Jews are clever managers!" Césarine did not like the earnest tone of praise and hastened to say bluntly: