“Never mind the notes.  Why has Deschamps’ jealousy revived so suddenly just recently?”

“Why?  Because mademoiselle would come back to the Opera Comique.  Deschamps could not suffer that.  And when she heard it was to be so, she wrote to me—­to me!—­and asked if it was true that mademoiselle was to appear as Carmen.  Then she came to see me—­me—­and I was obliged to tell her it was true, and she was frightfully angry, and then she began to cry—­oh, her despair!  She said she knew a way to stop mademoiselle from singing, and she begged me to help her, and I said I would.”

“You were willing to betray your mistress?”

“Deschamps swore it would do no real harm.  Do I not tell you that Deschamps and I always liked each other?  We were old friends.  I sympathized with her; she is growing old.”

“How much did she promise to pay you?”

“Not a sou—­not a centime.  I swear it.”  The girl stamped her foot and threw up her head, reddening with the earnestness of her disclaimer.  “What I did, I did from love; and I thought it would not harm mademoiselle, really.”

“Nevertheless you might have killed your mistress.”

“Alas!”

“Answer me this:  Now that your attempt has failed, what will Deschamps do?  Will she stop, or will she try something else?”

Yvette shook her head slowly.

“I do not know.  She is dangerous.  Sometimes she is like a mad woman.  You must take care.  For myself, I will never see her again.”

“You give your word on that?”

“I have said it.  There is nothing more to tell you.  So, adieu.  Say to mademoiselle that I have repented.”

She opened the door, and as she did so her eye seemed by chance to catch a small picture which hung by the side of the hearth.  My back was to the fireplace, and I did not trouble to follow her glance.

“Ah,” she murmured reflectively, “he was the most fine stern man ... and he gave me hundred-franc notes.”

Then she was gone.  We never saw nor heard of Yvette again.

Out of curiosity, I turned to look at the picture which must have caught her eye.  It was a little photograph, framed in black, and hung by itself on the wall; in the ordinary way one would scarcely have noticed it.  I went close up to it.  My heart gave a jump, and I seemed to perspire.  The photograph was a portrait of the man who, since my acquaintance with Rosa, had haunted my footsteps—­the mysterious and implacable person whom I had seen first opposite the Devonshire Mansion, then in the cathedral at Bruges during my vigil by the corpse of Alresca, then in the train which was wrecked, and finally in the Channel steamer which came near to sinking.  Across the lower part of it ran the signature, in large, stiff characters, “Clarenceux.”

So Lord Clarenceux was not dead, though everyone thought him so.  Here was a mystery more disturbing than anything which had gone before.