There was now no need to leave the house, the Anarchist having apparently taken his departure. With what anxiety she had listened to the voices of people breakfasting that first morning in the sunny air beneath her open window, while she took her coffee and roll cosily in bed, fearing to detect the harsh tones of the Anarchist among them. But she could only distinguish the plaintive notes of the thin man and the high treble and artificial gurgling laugh of Miss Boundrish, the daughter of the woman of ample girth, above the general cheerful ripple of morning chat. Her window being _au troisième_, she ventured once, modestly veiled in lace curtains, to peep out upon this amazing picture of people breakfasting out of doors at eight o'clock of a mid-winter morning, and, as every face was turned from the house to the glorious prospect of sunlit space, and most were too immediately beneath her to look up without dislocated necks, there was little fear of being seen. How pleasant it was, this intermittent sound of voices in open air. There was the thin man in a picturesque hat, breakfasting all alone on the edge of a little jutting plateau, his head outlined upon the blue space of the ravine, his face seaward. There is but one pleasanter thing than this social breakfasting out of doors--to lie in bed and hear other people do it through open windows. The voices were chiefly insular with a sprinkling of _Jawohls_ and _Sos_ and _Mais ouis_. Little bursts of laughter and detached sentences sometimes floated up to the window _au troisième_. Once she heard, in Miss Boundrish's overpowering head voice, "Mrs. Allonby, oh!" followed by the artificial gurgle that in the course of time jarred people's nerves; then Ermengarde knew that she had been given as it were to the lions, and was being served hot as a relish to the coffee and rolls, that her character, features, dress, complexion, figure, her probable past and possible present, her position, her upbringing and connexions, were being tossed from beast to beast, and disputed, growled, and chortled over. And once, in the voice of Miss Boundrish's mother, she heard the ejaculation, "What? _the_ Allonby?" and wondered which of Arthur's relations had been hung, and why he had never told her. Yet Miss Boundrish's mother had actually conferred upon Mrs. Allonby the shady white hat that reposed upon her hair as she sat in the garden terrace this afternoon. "I tried to wear it to pacify Mr. Boundrish, who's always worrying about sunstrokes and fevers, my dear," the kind lady said; "but it was too young for me, and Dorris is _very_ particular about her hats, as you may have noticed."