"Oh! don't you know her? Mademoiselle Violette Beaupaire," he replied in a half whisper lest the party referred to should overhear him, "she is the daughter of M. Beaupaire the stock broker, who is running about after the luggage, she's a ripping girl, I assure you, and no mistake." "Violette Beaupaire," said Riche half aloud to himself, "I know that name somehow. Where was it I heard it?" and he tapped his forehead in thought. "Oh! yes, I remember now, she was the girl with the wonderful ring I met that day at the café near the Ecolle de Medicine. How small the world is to be sure." "Why! You don't mean to say that you know her?" said Marcel, who had caught the drift of what he had been saying half aloud to himself. "Where did you meet her?" he added with a tinge of jealousy in his voice. The doctor related the curious adventure he had had at the café, and the marvellous predictions of Violette which she had made while gazing at the ring. "Have you never seen her since?" enquired Marcel with a tone of anxiety in his voice. "Never my boy, until this very day, I give you my word; but," he added, "I have been hunting all over Paris to try and find her ever since that afternoon. I would have given a good deal to have had her address." "Why! are you in love with her then?" asked Marcel as he scrutinized his friend's face while waiting for the reply, but could detect nothing in his face, not even a muscle moved. "Lord bless you, no," replied the doctor, "but she is the most interesting girl I have ever met in all my life, and I have been simply dying to test her extraordinary powers again with her ring." "Thank God for small mercies," thought Marcel to himself, as he assured himself that he was no rival of his, "However it is just as well that he and I will be travelling in another part of the train out of the reach of temptation." The departure of the Rapide de Nuit from the Gare de Lyon is one of the greatest events of the day. The great glass-roofed station is filled with fog, and vibrates with the shrill whistles of innumerable engines which perpetually come and go apparently without rhyme or reason. At all times the din is ear-splitting, but from half past eight p.m. onwards, the noise increases tenfold. The station gets more and more packed with people. Here one may notice a company of tired and sunburnt soldiers marching up the platform in their blue coats and red baggy trousers covered with black leather below the knee, each carrying a painfully heavy knapsack and rifle; while hurrying along may be seen gay-coloured Turcos, Arabs with their red fezzes, or crowds of peasants patiently waiting for the omnibus train, which leaves an hour later than the express. The waiting rooms are crowded with tourists, English, French, Germans, and Americans.