“You had better go and see him, Thuillier, and get rid of him in double-quick,” said Brigitte; “that’s shorter than talking to Henri, who is always an orator.”

If la Peyrade had been consulted he might not have joined in that advice, for he had had more than one specimen of the spokes some occult influence was putting into the wheels of his marriage, and the present visit seemed to him ominous.

“Show him into my study,” said Thuillier, following his sister’s advice; and, opening the door which led from the salon to the study, he went to receive his importunate visitor.

Brigitte immediately applied her eye to the keyhole.

“Goodness!” she exclaimed, “there’s my imbecile of a Thuillier offering him a chair! and away in a corner, too, where I can’t hear a word they say!”

La Peyrade was walking about the room with an inward agitation covered by an appearance of great indifference.  He even went up to the three women, and made a few lover-like speeches to Celeste, who received them with a smiling, happy air in keeping with the role she was playing.  As for Colleville, he was killing the time by composing an anagram on the six words of “le journal ‘l’Echo de la Bievre,’” for which he had found the following version, little reassuring (as far as it went) for the prospects of that newspaper:  “O d’Echo, jarni! la bevue reell”—­but as the final “e” was lacking to complete the last word, the work was not altogether as satisfactory as it should have been.

“He’s taking snuff!” said Brigitte, her eye still glued to the keyhole; “his gold snuff-box beats Minard’s—­though, perhaps, it is only silver-gilt,” she added, reflectively.  “He’s doing the talking, and Thuillier is sitting there listening to him like a buzzard.  I shall go in and tell them they can’t keep ladies waiting that way.”

But just as she put her hand on the lock she heard Thuillier’s visitor raise his voice, and that made her look through the keyhole again.

“He is standing up; he’s going,” she said with satisfaction.

But a moment later she saw she had made a mistake; the little old man had only left his chair to walk up and down the room and continue the conversation with greater freedom.

“My gracious!  I shall certainly go in,” she said, “and tell Thuillier we are going without him, and he can follow us.”

So saying, the old maid gave two little sharp and very imperious raps on the door, after which she resolutely entered the study.

La Peyrade, goaded by anxiety, had the bad taste to look through the keyhole himself at what was happening.  Instantly he thought he recognized the small old man he had seen under the name of “the commander” on that memorable morning when he had waited for Madame de Godollo.  Then he saw Thuillier addressing his sister with impatience and with gestures of authority altogether out of his usual habits of deference and submission.