After she had so roughly disposed of the enterprising Henri Verbier,
whose most unseemly advances had so greatly scandalised her, Mlle.
Jeanne took to her heels, directly she was out of sight of the Royal
Palace Hotel, and ran like one possessed. She stood for a moment in the
brilliantly lighted, traffic-crowded Avenue Wagram, shaking with
excitement and with palpitating heart, and then mechanically hailed a
passing cab and told the driver to take her towards the Bois. There she
gave another heedless order to go to the boulevard Saint-Denis, but as
the cab approached the place de l'Etoile she realised that she was once
more near the Royal Palace Hotel, and stopping the driver by the tram
lines she dismissed him and got into a tram that was going to the
station of Auteuil. It was just half-past eleven when she reached the
station.
"When is the next train for Saint-Lazaire?" she asked.
She learned that one was starting almost at once, and hurriedly taking a
second-class ticket she jumped into a ladies' carriage and went as far
as Courcelles. There she alighted, went out of the station, looked
around her for a minute or two to get her bearings, and then walked
slowly towards the rue Eugène-Flachat. She hesitated a second, and then
walked firmly towards a particular house, and rang the bell.
* * * * *
"A lady to see you, sir," the footman said to M. Rambert.
"Bring her in here at once," said M. Rambert, supposing that the man had
kept the Baronne de Vibray waiting in the anteroom.
The drawing-room door was opened a little way, and someone came in and
stepped quickly into the shadow by the door. Thérèse, who had risen to
hurry towards the visitor, stopped short when she perceived that it was
a stranger and not her guardian. Noticing her action, M. Etienne Rambert
turned and looked at the person who had entered.
It was a lady.
"To what am I indebted----" he began with a bow; and then, having
approached the visitor, he broke off short. "Good heavens----!"
The bell rang a second time, and on this occasion the Baronne de Vibray
hurried into the room, a radiant incarnation of gaiety.
"I am most dreadfully late!" she exclaimed, and was hurrying towards M.
Etienne Rambert with outstretched hands, full of some amusing story she
had to tell him, when she too caught sight of the strange lady standing
stiffly in the corner of the room, with downcast eyes.
Etienne Rambert repressed his first emotion, smiled to the Baronne, and
then went towards the mysterious lady.
"Madame," he said, not a muscle of his face moving, "may I trouble you
to come into my study?"
"Who is that lady, M. Rambert?" said Thérèse when presently M. Rambert
came back into the drawing-room. "And how white you are!"