He told the little page that he would wait until madame returned, and took a seat in the quiet salon. Angry and baffled, Mme. Lorraine came down to him. _"Bénedicité_, daughter," said Father Quentin; but she looked at him inquiringly, without bending her lovely head. "I have come to see Eliot Van Zandt, who lies wounded in your house," he said, boldly. She gave a quick, nervous start, perfectly perceptible to his eyes, and her glance sought his, full of frightened inquiry. "The girl was right; he is hidden here," he thought, with fluttering pulses; but aloud he said, with pretended authority and outward calmness: "Lead me to his presence; I must see the young man at once." She had recovered her calmness as quickly as she had lost it. "Holy father, you amaze me!" she exclaimed, haughtily. "The man is not here. I read in my paper only this morning that he had most mysteriously disappeared. But come, I see you do not believe me. You shall search my house." He was a little staggered by her assurance. "I do not wish to seem intrusive," he said; "but my informant was very positive." Then he mentally shook himself. After all, he had no authority for his assertion, except the strange words of a girl who had just come out of a trance-like sleep--a girl who might simply have dreamed it all. But he followed her all over the pretty, elegantly appointed house, the little page carrying the keys and unlocking door after door until he was sure that not an apartment in the house remained unvisited. "You have a servant-woman, Mima," he said to her, as they descended the stairs. "Yes," she replied; "Mima is in the kitchen, preparing luncheon. You shall see her, too, holy father." Mima, at work over a dainty luncheon, bowed her head grimly to receive his blessing. "You have been nursing a sick, a wounded man, Monsieur Van Zandt," he said, trying to take her by surprise; but she did not betray as much self-consciousness as her mistress. "The holy father mistakes; I am a cook, not a nurse," she replied, coolly. And so he came away baffled, after all. Mme. Lorraine pressed a gold piece excitedly into the hand of the little page. "Follow the good priest, and come back and tell me where he lives," she exclaimed. * * * * * Father Quentin went his way immediately back to the convent, with the story of his disappointment, and concluded that Little Nobody's dream had been simply a dream, with nothing supernatural about it. The light that had seemed to shine momentarily on the mystery of Eliot Van Zandt's fate went out in rayless darkness. For the girl, she grew better and stronger daily, and submitted, with child-like patience, to the innumerable questions the good sisters asked her of her past life. They were shocked when she told them the story of her life with Mme. Lorraine, the life that she had counted of so little value that she had never even given her little white slave a name.