Clotilde turned her saddened eyes with a steady scrutiny upon her deceiver, who gazed upward in apparently unconscious reverie, and sighed softly as she laid her head upon the high chair-back and stretched out her feet.

“I wish Alphonsina would come back,” she said.  “Ah!” she added, hearing a footfall on the step outside the street door, “there she is.”

She arose and drew the bolt.  Unseen to her, the person whose footsteps she had heard stood upon the doorstep with a hand lifted to knock, but pausing to “makeup his mind.”  He heard the bolt shoot back, recognized the nature of the mistake, and, feeling that here again he was robbed of volition, rapped.

“That is not Alphonsina!”

The two ladies looked at each other and turned pale.

“But you must open it,” whispered Clotilde, half rising.

Aurora opened the door, and changed from white to crimson.  Clotilde rose up quickly.  The gentleman lifted his hat.

“Madame Nancanou.”

“M.  Grandissime?”

“Oui, Madame.”

For once, Aurora was in an uncontrollable flutter.  She stammered, lost her breath, and even spoke worse French than she needed to have done.

“Be pl—­pleased, sir—­to enter.  Clotilde, my daughter—­Monsieur Grandissime.  P-please be seated, sir.  Monsieur Grandissime,”—­she dropped into a chair with an air of vivacity pitiful to behold,—­“I suppose you have come for the rent.”  She blushed even more violently than before, and her hand stole upward upon her heart to stay its violent beating.  “Clotilde, dear, I should be glad if you would put the fire before the screen; it is so much too warm.”  She pushed her chair back and shaded her face with her hand.  “I think the warmer is growing weather outside, is it—­is it not?”

The struggles of a wounded bird could not have been more piteous.  Monsieur Grandissime sought to speak.  Clotilde, too, nerved by the sight of her mother’s embarrassment, came to her support, and she and the visitor spoke in one breath.

“Maman, if Monsieur—­pardon—­”

“Madame Nancanou, the—­pardon, Mademoiselle—­”

“I have presumed to call upon you,” resumed M. Grandissime, addressing himself now to both ladies at once, “to see if I may enlist you in a purely benevolent undertaking in the interest of one who has been unfortunate—­a common acquaintance—­”

“Common acquaint—­” interrupted Aurora, with a hostile lighting of her eyes.

“I believe so—­Professor Frowenfeld.”  M. Grandissme saw Clotilde start, and in her turn falsely accuse the fire by shading her face:  but it was no time to stop.  “Ladies,” he continued, “please allow me, for the sake of the good it may effect, to speak plainly and to the point.”

The ladies expressed acquiescence by settling themselves to hear.

“Professor Frowenfeld had the extraordinary misfortune this morning to incur the suspicion of having entered a house for the purpose of—­at least, for a bad design—­”