"Grid," he said, lowering his voice, "I've been wondering--don't you think it would be a good plan if I were to go and see that fortune-teller of mine, Madame d'Elphis? I don't mind telling you that I'd a shot at her yesterday evening, but she was away. She does sometimes make mistakes, but still, she's a kind of Providence to me. I never do anything important--I mean at the stables--without consulting her." Vanderlyn looked at the eager face, the odd twinkling green and blue eyes, with scarcely concealed surprise and contempt. "Surely you don't think she could tell you where--what's happened to Peggy?" he said incredulously. "If I could have seen her last night," went on Pargeter, "I'd have got away to England to-day. There's no object in my staying here; _I_ can't help them to find Peggy. But La d'Elphis won't see me before to-morrow morning. If she can't clear up the mystery nobody can. I'm beginning to think, Grid"--he came close up to the other man,--"that something must have happened to her. I'm beginning to feel--worried!" X. An hour later Vanderlyn had escaped from Pargeter, and was standing alone in Madame de Lera's drawing-room. He was scarcely conscious of how many hours he had spent during the last terrible three days, with the middle-aged Frenchwoman who had been so true and sure a friend of Margaret Pargeter. In Madame de Lera's presence alone was he able, to a certain extent, to drop the mask which he was compelled to wear in the presence of all others, and especially in that of the man who, as time went on, seemed more and more to lean on him and find comfort in his companionship. Vanderlyn had walked the considerable distance from the Avenue du Bois to the quiet street near the Luxembourg where Adele de Lera lived, and all the way he had felt as if pursued by a mocking demon. How much longer, so he asked himself, was his awful ordeal to endure? The moments spent by him and Pargeter in Peggy's room had racked heart and memory. He now fled to Madame de Lera as to a refuge from himself. And yet? Yet he never looked round her pretty sitting-room, with its faded, rather austere furnishings, without being vividly reminded of the woman he had loved and whom he had now lost, for it was there that Peggy had spent the most peaceful hours of her life since Pargeter had first decided that henceforth they should live in Paris. * * * * * At last Madame de Lera came into the room; she gave her visitor a quick questioning look. "Have you nothing new to tell?" she asked.