“Mr. Arbuthnot,” said the smart waiter, flinging the door very wide open, and lingering to see what might follow.

The lady rose slowly, bowed, waved her hand towards a chair at some distance from her own, and resumed her seat.  The waiter reluctantly left the room.

“I had not intended, sir, to give you the trouble of coming here,” said Mademoiselle de Sainte Aulaire, using her fan as a handscreen, and speaking in a low, and, as it seemed to me, a somewhat constrained voice.  I could not see her face, but something in the accent made my heart leap.

“Pray do not name it, madam,” I said.  “It is nothing.”

She bent her head, as if thanking me, and went on:—­

“I have come to this place,” she said, “in order to prosecute certain inquiries which are of great importance to myself.  May I ask if you are a native of Saxonholme?”

“I am.”

“Were you here in the year 18—?”

“I was.”

“Will you give me leave to test your memory respecting some events that took place about that time?”

“By all means.”

Mademoiselle de Sainte Aulaire thanked me with a gesture, withdrew her chair still farther from the radius of the lamp and the tire, and said:—­

“I must entreat your patience if I first weary you with one or two particulars of my family history,”

“Madam, I listen.”

During the brief pause that ensued, I tried vainly to distinguish something more of her features.  I could only trace the outline of a slight and graceful figure, the contour of a very slender hand, and the ample folds of a dark silk dress.

At length, in a low, sweet voice, she began:—­

“Not to impose upon you any dull genealogical details,” she said, “I will begin by telling you that the Sainte Aulaires are an ancient French family of Bearnais extraction, and that my grandfather was the last Marquis who bore the title.  Holding large possessions in the comtat of Venaissin (a district which now forms part of the department of Vaucluse) and other demesnes at Montlhery, in the province of the Ile de France—–­”

“At Montlhery!” I exclaimed, suddenly recovering the lost link in my memory.

“The Sainte Aulaires,” continued the lady, without pausing to notice my interruption, “were sufficiently wealthy to keep up their social position, and to contract alliances with many of the best families in the south of France.  Towards the early part of the reign of Louis XIII. they began to be conspicuous at court, and continued to reside in and near Paris up to the period of the Revolution.  Marshals of France, Envoys, and Ministers of State during a period of nearly a century and a half, the Sainte Aulaires had enjoyed too many honors not to be among the first of those who fell in the Reign of Terror.  My grandfather, who, as I have already said, was the last Marquis bearing the title, was seized with his wife and daughter at his Chateau near Montlhery in the spring-time of 1793, and carried to La Force.  Thence, after a mock trial, they were all three conveyed to execution, and publicly guillotined on the sixth of June in the same year.  Do you follow me?”