"No, I am not Madame Lemarque, but I am her business representative. Any orders intended for Madame Lemarque can be executed by me. I am Mademoiselle Beauville." "Alas, Mademoiselle, it is not a question of orders," replied Heathcote, in his most courteous tones. "I have come on a painful errand. I have to impart very sad news to Madame Lemarque." Madame Beauville sighed and shrugged her thin shoulders. "Madame Lemarque is taking her rest in a place where all the events of this earth are alike indifferent," she said. "Take the trouble to enter my humble apartment, gentlemen. Madame Lemarque was my partner and my friend." Heathcote and his companion followed the dressmaker into her little _salon_, where a dilapidated old gray cockatoo was clambering upon a perch, seemingly in danger of doing himself to death head downwards at every other minute. The _salon_ was like the appearance of Mademoiselle Beauville, scrupulously neat, painfully pinched and spare. A poor little old-fashioned walnut table, polished to desperation, a cheap little china vase of common flowers, a carpet which covered only a small island in an ocean of red tiles, an old mahogany secrétaire with materials for writing, and by way of decoration the fashion-plates of _Le Follet_ neatly pinned against the dingy wall-paper. There was a work-basket on the table, and Mademoiselle Beauville had apparently been busily remaking a very old gown of her own, in order to keep her hand in during the dead season. Heathcote discovered later that Mademoiselle Beauville cherished one bitter and unappeasable hatred, and that was against Messrs. Spricht, Van Klopen, and the whole confraternity of men-milliners. "Then Madame Lemarque is dead, I apprehend, Mademoiselle?" "Madame Lemarque died last June." "Suddenly?" "No, she had been ailing for some time. But the end came more quickly than she expected. My poor friend had but a short time in which to arrange her affairs." "Was her granddaughter Léonie living with her at the time of her death?" "She was. But what do you know about Léonie?" The ex-detective laid his hand hastily upon Heathcote's wrist before he could answer. "Answer nothing until we have heard what she can tell us," he whispered. "I know very little about her, but I am anxious to know more; and if you should be a loser by the waste of your time in answering my inquiries, I shall be most happy to recompense you for that loss," said Heathcote. The spinster's hungry eyes sparkled. Decent poverty has depths unknown to the professed pauper. Mademoiselle's larder would have exhibited a touching spectacle to the eye of the philosopher or physiologist. The philosopher would have wondered that woman can endure privation with such patience: the physiologist would have been surprised that humanity can sustain life upon so little. For weeks past Mademoiselle Beauville's most luxurious idea of dinner had been an egg. For the last week her daily ration had been two halfpenny rolls.