“But that dreadful woman, father?” she cried. And the Alpine flower from which honey is made looked like a poor little frost-bitten lily of the valley. She faced him on the landing. “That woman—that——” he waved an arm. “That,” said he, quoting bitterly, “is a woman of no importance.” “Ah!” cried Félise. With some of the elemental grossnesses of life she was acquainted. You cannot manage a hotel in France which is a free, non-Puritanical country, and remain in imbecile ignorance. She was shocked to the depths of her being. “Come,” said Fortinbras with outstretched hand. But she shrank from him. “Come!” he commanded. “There’s no time to lose. We must get out of this.” “Where are we going?” she asked. “To the Gare de Montparnasse. You must return at once to Chartres.” “I will never enter the house of Aunt Clothilde again,” said Félise. “But what has happened? My God! what has happened?” he asked, as they hurried down the stairs. Breathlessly, brokenly, she told him. In the courtyard he paused, put his hand to his head. “But what can I do with you? My God! what can I do with you in this dreadful city?” “Isn’t there a hotel in Paris?” she asked, coldly. He laughed in a mirthless way. “There are many. There are the Ritz and the Meurice and the Elysée Palace. Yes—there are hotels enough!” “I have plenty of money,” she said. “No, no, my child,” said he. “Not an hotel. I should go mad. I have an idea. Come.” They had just reached the evil pavement of the Rue Maugrabine, when Cécile Fortinbras, sister of the excellent Gaspard Bigourdin and the pious Clothilde Robineau, and mother of Félise, recovered from the stupor to which the unprecedented fury of her husband had reduced her, and reeled drunkenly to the flat door. “_Je vais arracher les yeux à cette putain-là!_” She started to tear the hussy’s eyes out; but by the time she had accomplished the difficult descent and had expounded her grievances to an unsympathetic concierge, a motor omnibus was conveying father and daughter silent and anguished to the other side of the River Seine. CHAPTER XII THE huge door on the Boulevard Saint Germain swung open at Fortinbras’s ring and admitted them to a warm, marble-floored vestibule adorned with rugs, palms and a cast or two of statuary. Facing them, in its cage of handsome wrought iron-work, stood the lift. All indicated a life so far apart from that of the Rue Maugrabine that Félise, in spite of the despair and disillusion that benumbed her soul, uttered an exclamation of surprise. “Who lives here?” “Lucilla Merriton, an American girl. Pray God she is in,” replied Fortinbras, opening the lift gate. “We can but see.” He pressed the second-floor button and the lift shot up. On the landing were the same tokens of luxury. A neat maid answered the door. Mademoiselle Merriton was at home, but she had just begun dinner. Fortinbras drew a card from a shabby pocketbook.