“Oh! an every-day matter, mother.” The old woman shook her head. “Why were you talking so loud then?” she inquired. “Weren’t you quarrelling? It must be something very grave when it’s necessary to conceal it from me. I couldn’t see your employer’s face, my son; but I heard his voice, and it didn’t please me. It isn’t the voice of an honest, straightforward man. Take care, Toto, and don’t allow yourself to be cajoled--be prudent.” However, it was quite unnecessary to recommend prudence to Victor Chupin. He had promised his assistance, but not without a mental reservation. “No need to see danger till it comes,” he had said to himself. “If the thing proves to be of questionable propriety after all, then good-evening; I desert.” It remains to know what he meant by questionable propriety; the meaning of the expression is rather vague. He had returned in all honesty and sincerity of purpose to an honest life, and nothing in the world would have induced him, avaricious though he was, to commit an act that was positively wrong. Only the line that separates good from evil was not very clearly defined in his mind. This was due in a great measure to his education, and to the fact that it had been long before he realized that police regulations do not constitute the highest moral law. It was due also to chance, and, since he had no decided calling, to the necessity of depending for a livelihood upon the many strange professions which impecunious and untrained individuals, both of the higher and lower classes, adopt in Paris. However, on the following morning he arrayed himself in his best apparel, and at exactly half-past eleven o’clock he rang at his employer’s door. M. Fortunat had made quick work with his clients that morning, and was ready, dressed to go out. He took up his hat and said only the one word, “Come.” The place where the agent conducted his clerk was the wine-shop in the Rue de Berry, where he had made inquiries respecting Madame d’Argeles the evening before; and on arriving there, he generously offered him a breakfast. Before entering, however, he pointed out Madame d’Argeles’s pretty house on the opposite side of the street, and said to him: “The woman whom you are to follow, and whose son you are to discover, will emerge from that house.” At that moment, after a night passed in meditating upon his mother’s prophetic warnings, Chupin was again beset by the same scruples which had so greatly disturbed him on the previous evening. However, they soon vanished when he heard the wine-vendor, in reply to M. Fortunat’s skilful questions, begin to relate all he knew concerning Madame Lia d’Argeles, and the scandalous doings at her house. The seeker after lost heirs and his clerk were served at a little table near the door; and while they partook of the classical beef-steak and; potatoes--M. Fortunat eating daintily, and Chupin bolting his food with the appetite of a ship-wrecked mariner--they watched the house opposite.