"Madame, your strange guest-chamber is ready," she said, with curt sarcasm. "But this heavy body--how shall we convey it down the stairs?" "You are big and strong enough," Mme. Lorraine replied, coolly. "You may go in front and carry his body; I will follow with his pretty head in my arms." And so, as if the fate that had stricken him down into seeming death had not been dark enough, he was borne, an unconscious prisoner, into an underground chamber beneath Mme. Lorraine's house--a luxurious chamber, richly furnished, but of whose presence no one was aware save herself and this servant, for it was entered by a door cleverly concealed among the oak panelings of the hall. The light of day never entered this secret chamber. It was illumined by a swinging-lamp, and the odor of dried rose leaves from a jar of _pot-pourri_ in one corner pleasantly pervaded the air, dispelling some of the mustiness and closeness inseparable from its underground situation. They laid Van Zandt down upon a soft white bed, and Mme. Lorraine said, coolly: "Now, Mima, you may examine into the extent of his wound." The large, masculine-looking woman went to work in quite a professional way on her unconscious patient, and in a short time she looked around and said, to the great relief of her mistress: "It is an ugly wound, very near his heart, but not necessarily a dangerous one, unless a fever sets in. He has fainted from loss of blood, and I will dress the wound before I attempt to revive him. You may go upstairs, for I see you growing pale already at the sight of blood, and I don't want you here fainting on my hands." "Thank you, Mima," said Mme. Lorraine, almost meekly; for one of her weaknesses, which she shared in common with most women, was that the sight of blood always made her very sick and faint. She staggered out of the close room, toiled feebly up the stairs, and drank two glasses of wine to steady her trembling nerves; then she extinguished the lights in the house, and retired to her bed. She was still awake when Carmontelle returned in quest of Eliot Van Zandt, and she laughed in her sleeve at his furious, ineffectual peals at the bell. Stealing to the window, she drew back a fold of the curtain and peered down at him, chuckling softly when she saw him take his angry departure. Then she returned to her silken couch, and slept soundly for hours. The sun was high in the heavens when Mima's rough, impatient hand shook her broad awake without ceremony. "Are you going to sleep all day?" she demanded. "You wouldn't if you knew what had happened. The little one's gone. I can't find her in the house or the grounds, and her bed ain't been slept in all night." She gazed suspiciously into madame's startled face, which was not so handsome now with the cosmetics washed from it, and that frown wrinkling her brow. She repeated Mima's word in apparently stupid amaze: "Gone!" "Yes, gone! Don't you know anything about it? Ain't you had a hand in it?"