“Good heavens!” I exclaimed, “but what became of Oli—­of the young English lady, and the child?”

“Ah, m’sieur!” he said, “I do not know.  I do not live in Noireau, but I pass to and fro from Falaise in La Petite Vitesse.  She has not returned in my omnibus, that is all I know.  But she could go to Granville, or to Caen.  There are other omnibuses, you see.  Somebody will tell you down there.”

For three or four miles before us there lay a road as straight as a rule, ending in a small cluster of lights glimmering in the bottom of a valley, into which we were descending with great precaution on the part of the driver and his team.  That was Noireau.  But already my exhilaration was exchanged for profound anxiety.  I extorted from the Norman all the information he possessed concerning the bankrupt; it was not much, and it only served to heighten my solicitude.

It was nearly eleven o’clock before we entered the town; but I learned a few more particulars from the middle-aged woman in the omnibus bureau.  She recollected the name of Miss Ellen Martineau, and her arrival; and she described her with the accuracy and faithfulness of a woman.  If she were not Olivia herself, she must be her very counterpart.  But who was the child, a girl of nine or ten years of age, who had accompanied her?  It was too late to learn any more about them.  The landlady of the hotel confirmed all I had heard, and added several items of information.  Monsieur Perrier and his wife had imposed upon several English families, and had succeeded in getting dozens of English pupils, so she assured me, who had been scattered over the country, Heaven only knew where, when the school was broken up, about a month ago.

I started out early the next morning to find the Rue de Grace, where the inscription on my photographic view of the premises represented them as situated.  The town was in the condition of a provincial town in England about a century ago.  The streets were as dirty as the total absence of drains and scavengers could make them, and the cleanest path was up the kennel in the centre.  The filth of the houses was washed down into them by pipes, with little cisterns at each story, and under almost every window.  There were many improprieties, and some indecencies, shocking to English sensibilities.  In the Rue de Grace I saw two nuns in their hoods and veils, unloading a cart full of manure.  A ladies’ school for English people in a town like this seemed ridiculous.

There was no difficulty in finding the houses in my photographic view.  There were two of them, one standing in the street, the other lying back beyond a very pleasant garden.  A Frenchman was pacing up and down the broad gravel-path which connected them, smoking a cigar, and examining critically the vines growing against the walls.  Two little children were gambolling about in close white caps, and with frocks down to their heels.  Upon seeing me, he took his cigar from his lips with two fingers of one hand, and lifted his hat with the other.  I returned the salutation with a politeness as ceremonious as his own.