through the usual cracks enabled him to see lying on the low divan something bulky, which had the appearance of two women clasped in each other’s arms.  Tearful and desolate murmurs issued mysteriously from that appearance.  General D’Hubert pulled open the nearest pair of shutters violently.  One of the women then jumped up.  It was his sister.  She stood for a moment with her hair hanging down and her arms raised straight up above her head, and then flung herself with a stifled cry into his arms.  He returned her embrace, trying at the same time to disengage himself from it.  The other woman had not risen.  She seemed, on the contrary, to cling closer to the divan, hiding her face in the cushions.  Her hair was also loose; it was admirably fair.  General D’Hubert recognized it with staggering emotion.  Mademoiselle de Valmassigue!  Adele!  In distress!

He became greatly alarmed, and got rid of his sister’s hug definitely.  Madame Leonie then extended her shapely bare arm out of her peignoir, pointing dramatically at the divan.  “This poor, terrified child has rushed here from home, on foot, two miles—­running all the way.”

“What on earth has happened?” asked General D’Hubert in a low, agitated voice.

But Madame Leonie was speaking loudly.  “She rang the great bell at the gate and roused all the household—­we were all asleep yet.  You may imagine what a terrible shock. . . .  Adele, my dear child, sit up.”

General D’Hubert’s expression was not that of a man who “imagines” with facility.  He did, however, fish out of the chaos of surmises the notion that his prospective mother-in-law had died suddenly, but only to dismiss it at once.  He could not conceive the nature of the event or the catastrophe which would induce Mademoiselle de Valmassigue, living in a house full of servants, to bring the news over the fields herself, two miles, running all the way.

“But why are you in this room?” he whispered, full of awe.

“Of course, I ran up to see, and this child . . .  I did not notice it . . . she followed me.  It’s that absurd Chevalier,” went on Madame Leonie, looking towards the divan. . . .  “Her hair is all come down.  You may imagine she did not stop to call her maid to dress it before she started. . .  Adele, my dear, sit up. . . .  He blurted it all out to her at half-past five in the morning.  She woke up early and opened her shutters to breathe the fresh air, and saw him sitting collapsed on a garden bench at the end of the great alley.  At that hour—­you may imagine!  And the evening before he had declared himself indisposed.  She hurried on some clothes and flew down to him.  One would be anxious for less.  He loves her, but not very intelligently.  He had been up all night, fully dressed, the poor old man, perfectly exhausted.  He wasn’t in a state to invent a plausible story. . . .  What a confidant you chose there!  My husband was furious.  He said, ‘We can’t interfere now.’  So we sat down to wait.