For a few moments Barrington was silent.  “We will not fail,” he said suddenly.  “I want to laugh and cry out for joy but dare not.  I have been in a dream, mademoiselle, while you have been speaking; sitting on a small green mound looking across the bluest waters in the world.  I shall tell you about that mound and those waters some day.  We shall live, mademoiselle, never doubt that we shall live.  My plan is not yet complete, but—­”

“This is Thursday,” said Jeanne.  “Saturday is very near.”

[Illustration:  “Never fear, Mademoiselle, we shall live.”]

“I know.  We go to-morrow night, but the exact details I cannot tell you yet.  There are one or two things I must find out first.  I have arranged everything as far as I can, but we cannot hope for much help from others.  The first thing is to get out of this trap, the rest we must leave for the present.  The Abbe yonder looks as though he envied me your company, mademoiselle.  I think you should go to him.  I shall not attempt to speak to you much more to-day.  To-morrow morning we will meet here again for a final word.”

The Abbe was more than ever convinced of his own attractions as Jeanne left the Marquis de Castellux with a little grave courtesy and joined him.  He had found her substitute a poor companion and walked much less in the garden than usual.

“You find the Marquis very interesting?” he asked.

“Yes, but very provincial.  One soon becomes weary of such company, yet one must be kind, Monsieur l’Abbe,” and Jeanne laughed lightly.  She appeared much more interested in him than she had been in the Marquis.

Richard Barrington talked to others for a little while, and then went into the office.  He found a servant and asked if he could see Legrand.  The doctor was out.  Barrington was rather annoyed.  He wanted to see the room he was to have after Saturday.  At present he was stalled like a pig, he declared.

“Monsieur will have nothing to complain of after Saturday,” the servant answered.

“Which guest is leaving?”

“Pardon, monsieur, it is not etiquette to speak of it; but if monsieur likes I can show him the room.”

“Show it to me, then.”

“I am a poor man, monsieur, and cannot afford to work for nothing.”

“How much?” Barrington asked.

The servant named a price, and if he received many such fees he would not long be able to call himself a poor man.  Barrington paid him, and was taken upstairs and shown Jeanne’s room.  He did not cross the threshold, hardly glanced in at the door, in fact, but grumbled at its size and its position.  He would have liked this room or that.  Why not one at the end of this passage?  He liked to be in a light passage.

“It is not a pleasant outlook this side, monsieur, stable roofs, a bare wall and no garden.”

“Truly, a prospect to drive a man to despair,” growled Barrington, looking from the passage window on to the roofs of outbuildings a few feet below, and across at the house which these buildings joined, and which was at the end of a row of houses facing the street.  There was only one window in that opposite wall, twelve or fourteen feet above these outbuildings, a dirty window, fast shut.