"Gone? No. He has just received a message from the Prefet. Madame is taken in sharp illness. He came here fretting and fuming on his way to the Prefecture, as if this horrible Monsieur Saint-Martin were the one person he most desired to see upon the earth. Did you not understand, Zenobie? It is I who must go." "You! I understand! How can I understand?" screamed madame, facing round upon him in a flame of indignation--"when you come crying out that you are ruined, all the time having the game placed in your very hands! You have grown so crooked, you cannot even speak straight to your own wife. Can you not think even so much as this for yourself! Are you blind--a dolt--a baby--an imbecile!" "Zenobie!" implored the little man in an agony. "Yes!" she said, with a world of scorn in her tone; "that is your _metier_, and all you are fit for--to take care lest any one should overhear us. I cannot keep patience always. All the world may know that Monsieur Saint-Martin is coming, if they will." "Zenobie!" "I repeat it. At what time do you go?" "The train leaves in half an hour." "Then do not interrupt me." She turned away from him, and sat down. M. Roulleau, too glad to gain peace, waited patiently. For five minutes there was silence, broken by no sound but the heavy drip of rain; a distant rumble of carts; one or two church clocks striking the hour. Then madame lifted her head, and spoke in a measured, set voice, very different from her late vehement outbreak,-- "You will go to the station, and take a ticket for Pont-huine," she said; "but you will get out at Maury, the village on this side of it. Make what inquiries you can about strangers at the Lion d'Or, and return by the last train. It is probable that M. Deshoulieres will meet you at the station." "What then?" said the little man breathlessly. "You have seen nothing, heard nothing, done nothing. No one has appeared at the Lion d'Or. If you may venture an opinion, the whole affair is a silly hoax. Are you capable of this?" "Every day implicates us more," Roulleau said, wiping his face. "There is no gain without speculation," replied madame, with one of her scornful glances. "Would you prefer opening your arms to Monsieur Saint-Martin?" "He will ask so many questions." "It is the more easy in such a case to shape your answers."