In the midst of this performance, just at that point when the assassins are described as falling upon their knees before their victim, the door of the room was softly opened, and another guest slipped in unseen behind us.  Slipped in, indeed, so quietly that (the backs of the audience being turned that way) no one seemed to hear, and no one looked round but myself.

Brief as was that glance, and all in the shade as he stood, I recognised him instantly.

It was the mysterious stranger of the Cafe Procope.

CHAPTER XXXIV.

MY AUNT’S FLOWER GARDEN.

Having despatched the venerable Coligny much to her own satisfaction and apparently to the satisfaction of her hearers, Mdlle.  Honoria returned to private life; Messieurs Philomene and Dorinet removed the footlights; the audience once more dispersed itself about the room; and Madame Marotte welcomed the new-comer as Monsieur Lenoir.

“Monsieur est bien aimable,” she said, nodding and smiling, and, with tremulous hands, smoothing down the front of her black silk gown.  “I had told these young ladies that we hoped for the honor of Monsieur’s society.  Will Monsieur permit me to introduce him?”

“With pleasure, Madame Marotte.”

And M. Lenoir—­white cravatted, white kid-gloved, hat in hand, perfectly well-dressed in full evening black, and wearing a small orange-colored rosette at his button-hole—­bowed, glanced round the room, and, though his eyes undoubtedly took in both Mueller and myself, looked as if he had never seen either of us in his life.

I< saw Mueller start, and the color fly into his face.

“By Heaven!” he exclaimed, “it is—­it must be ... look at him, Arbuthnot!  If that isn’t the man who stole my sketch-book, I’ll eat my head!”

“It is the man,” I replied.  “I recognised him ten minutes ago, when he first came in.”

“You are certain?”

“Quite certain.”

“And yet—­there is something different!”

There was something different; but, at the same time, much that was identical.  There was the same strange, inscrutable look, the same bronzed complexion, the same military bearing.  M. Lenoir, it was true, was well, and even elegantly dressed; whereas, the stranger of the Cafe Procope bore all the outward stigmata of penury; but that was not all.  There was yet “something different.”  The one looked like a man who had done, or suffered, a wrong in his time; who had an old quarrel with the world; and who only sought to hide himself, his poverty, and his bitter pride from the observation of his fellow men.  The other stood before us dignified, decore, self-possessed, a man not only of the world, but apparently no stranger to that small section of it called “the great world.”  In a word, the man of the Cafe, sunken, sullen, threadbare as he was, would have been almost less out of his proper place in Madame Marotte’s society of small trades-people and minor professionals, than was M. Lenoir with his grand air and his orange-colored ribbon.