La Couteau was waiting for Mathieu in the doorway.  On perceiving Constance, whom she did not know, for she had never previously met her, she seemed surprised.  Who could that lady be? what had she to do with the affair?  However, she promptly extinguished the bright gleam of curiosity which for a moment lighted up her eyes; and as Herminie, with distinguished nonchalance, was at that moment exhibiting a party of nurses to two gentlemen in the office, she took her visitors into the empty refectory, where the atmosphere was as usual tainted by a horrible stench of cookery.

“You must excuse me, monsieur and madame,” she exclaimed, “but there is no other room free just now.  The place is full.”

Then she carried her keen glances from Mathieu to Constance, preferring to wait until she was questioned, since another person was now in the secret.

“You can speak out,” said Mathieu.  “Did you make the inquiries I spoke to you about?”

“Certainly, monsieur.  They were made, and properly made, I think.”

“Then tell us the result:  I repeat that you can speak freely before this lady.”

“Oh! monsieur, it won’t take me long.  You were quite right:  there were two apprentices at the wheelwright’s at Saint-Pierre, and one of them was Alexandre-Honore, the pretty blonde’s child, the same that we took together over yonder.  He had been there, I found, barely two months, after trying three or four other callings, and that explains my ignorance of the circumstance.  Only he’s a lad who can stay nowhere, and so three weeks ago he took himself off.”

Constance could not restrain an exclamation of anxiety:  “What! took himself off?”

“Yes, madame, I mean that he ran away, and this time it is quite certain that he has left the district, for he disappeared with three hundred francs belonging to Montoir, his master.”

La Couteau’s dry voice rang as if it were an axe dealing a deadly blow.  Although she could not understand the lady’s sudden pallor and despairing emotion, she certainly seemed to derive cruel enjoyment from it.

“Are you quite sure of your information?” resumed Constance, struggling against the facts.  “That is perhaps mere village tittle-tattle.”

“Tittle-tattle, madame?  Oh! when I undertake to do anything I do it properly.  I spoke to the gendarmes.  They have scoured the whole district, and it is certain that Alexandre-Honore left no address behind him when he went off with those three hundred francs.  He is still on the run.  As for that I’ll stake my name on it.”

This was indeed a hard blow for Constance.  That lad, whom she fancied she had found again, of whom she dreamt incessantly, and on whom she had based so many unacknowledgable plans of vengeance, escaped her, vanished once more into the unknown!  She was distracted by it as by some pitiless stroke of fate, some fresh and irreparable defeat.  However, she continued the interrogatory.