‘You seem also to be favoured by mice?’ said Fenwick, idly looking at two traps on the floor beside him.

Watson smiled.

’My femme de service sets those traps every night.  She says we are overrun—­the greatest nonsense!  As if there wasn’t enough for all of us!  Then in the night—­I sleep there, you see, behind that screen—­I wake, and hear some little fool squeaking.  So I get up, and take the trap downstairs in the dark—­right away down—­to the first floor.  And there I let the mouse go—­those folk down there are rich enough to keep him.  The only drawback is that my old woman is so cross in the morning, and she spends her life thinking of new traps. Ah, ben!—­Je la laisse faire!’

‘And this place suits you?’

‘Admirably—­till the cold comes.  Then I march.  I must have the sun.’

He shivered again.  Fenwick, struck by something in his tone, looked at him more closely.

‘How are you, by the way?’ he asked, repentantly, ’I ought to have inquired before.  You mentioned consulting some big man here.  What did he say to you?’

‘Oh, that I am phthisical, and must take care,’ said Watson, carelessly—­’that’s no news.  Ah! by the way’—­he hurried the change of subject—­’you know, of course, that Lord Findon and madame are to be at Versailles?’

‘They will be there to-night,’ said Fenwick, after a moment.

‘Ah! to-night.  Then you meet them?’

‘I shall see them, of course.’

’What a blessed thing to be rid of that fellow!—­What’s she been doing since?’

Fenwick replied that since the death of her husband—­about a year before this date—­Madame de Pastourelles, worn out with nursing, had been pursuing health—­in Egypt and elsewhere.  Her father, stepmother, and sister had been travelling with her.  The sister and she were to stay at Versailles till Christmas.  It was a place for which Madame de Pastourelles had an old affection.

‘And I suppose you know that you will find the Welbys there too?’

Fenwick made a startled movement.

‘The Welbys?  How did you hear that?’

’I had my usual half-yearly letter from Cuningham yesterday.  He’s the fellow for telling you the news.  Welby has begun a big picture of Marie Antoinette, at Trianon, and has taken a studio in Versailles for the winter.’

Fenwick turned away and began to pace the bare floor of the studio.

‘I didn’t know,’ he said, evidently discomposed.

’By the way, I have often meant to ask you.  I trust he wasn’t mixed up in the “hanging” affair?’ said Watson, with a quick look at his companion.

’He was ill the day it was done, but in my opinion he behaved in an extremely mean and ungenerous manner afterwards!’ exclaimed Fenwick, suddenly flushing from brow to chin.

‘You mean he didn’t support you?’

’He shilly-shallied.  He thought—­I have very good reason to believe—­that I had been badly treated—­that there was personal feeling in the matter—­resentment of things that I had written—­and so on but he would never come out into the open and say so!’