Such feelings are not at all comfortable; it was a relief to forget them in indignation at the indignity of being turned out of a hotel. How had the woman dared? Was she, Ermengarde Allonby, to submit to the creature's impertinence, to be driven away by the insolence of an unmannerly Frenchwoman? Never, though at first she had intended to go straight home. Turned out of a hotel? Well, after all, _à qui la perte_? Les Oliviers was not the only house of entertainment on the Riviera. It would be something to escape from the eternal cackle of the Boundrish; there could not possibly be two Boundrishes along the Azure Shore. It was an opportunity to drop the undesirable friendship with the woman of mystery. Somehow, the prospect of dropping this friendship was not wholly agreeable. There was a dreadful fascination about that young woman, whose good points were undeniable. Besides, Ermengarde was so sorry for her, and so ready to do her any service short of selling doubtfully acquired jewellery for her. Then there was the moral regeneration of this frail sister to be considered. That certainly had not as yet made great progress; indeed, some faint hesitation as to her own power of effecting it was beginning to creep into Ermengarde's mind. She realized that she was herself hardly a saint. After all, there is not so much superfluous virtue floating loose in the world that people can afford to share any with erring brothers and sisters. Perhaps her own lamp wanted a little trimming and replenishing. It would be lonely work to go into a strange hotel, and probably more expensive than staying here. No; she must go home--home to fogs and mud and east winds; home to a husband who, besides not being there, never had, and never would, care for her; who had been capable of becoming suddenly famous by writing the most powerful and remarkable novel of the last twenty years, and never telling her a word about it. She had no home to go to; she had been turned out of a third-rate hotel. So many sorrows were out of proportion to her demerits; she was very, very sorry for herself. Warm sunshine drew out the fragrance of rosemary and myrtle; the still air was drowsy with the buzzing of innumerable bees; mountain peaks nodded, shadowy dells and wooded slopes heaved gently like summer waves; the humming deepened to a sea-surge, to organ-booming, and now Ermengarde sank back against a springy cushion of grey-white heather, her head pillowed on rosemary-bloom, fast asleep.