“I would like to believe you, madame,” he replied, “but are you very certain that Mlle. Moriaz is still at Churwalden?”

And, pointing with his finger, he showed her at the end of the avenue a figure coming towards them clad in a pretty nut-brown dress with a long train sweeping the gravel.

“Truly, I believe that it is she,” cried Mme. de Lorcy.  “M.  Moriaz is the most unskilful person; but, after all, not much harm is done.”

Mlle. Moriaz had arrived the evening previous at Cormeilles.  After resting somewhat from the fatigues of the journey, she had nothing more urgent to do than to order the horses put to her coupe and to come and pay her respects to her godmother, who could not fail to be touched by this attention.

Mme. de Lorcy ran to Antoinette and embraced her several times, saying:  “You are here at last!  How charmed I am to see you again!  You made us wait long enough; I began to fear that you had taken root in the Grisons.  Is it indeed an enchanted land?  I rather believe that your father is a cruel egotist, that he shamefully sacrificed you to his own convenience in prolonging his cure; but here you are—­I will pardon him.  Your poor, your proteges, are clamorous for you.  Who do you think asked after you, the other day?  Mlle. Galet, whom, according to your orders, I supplied with her quarter’s allowance.  How you spoil her!  I found on her table a bouquet fit for a duchess; she insisted that you had sent it to her from where you were, and I had all the trouble in the world to make her understand that double camellias are not gathered among the glaciers of Roseg.  Strew with flowers, if you will, Mlle. Galet’s existence and garret; but do not fling at her head a bushel of double camellias, streaked with white; it is madness.  I seriously propose to have you put under restraint.  Never mind, I am very happy to see you again.  You are looking very well.—­Don’t you think, Camille, that she appears extremely well?”

Mlle. Moriaz coldly received Mme. de Lorcy’s embraces; but she smiled graciously on M. Langis, and pressed his hand affectionately.  Mme. de Lorcy led them into her salon, where they talked on indifferent subjects.  Antoinette was waiting for M. Langis’s departure to broach the subject that she had at heart.  At the end of twenty minutes, he rose, but immediately reseated himself.  A door had just opened, giving admittance to Count Abel Larinski.

At the unexpected apparition of Samuel Brohl, the two women changed colour; the one flushed from the effort that she made to dissimulate her vexation, the other turned pale from emotion.  Samuel Brohl crossed the salon with deliberate step, without appearing to recognise the person who was with Mme. de Lorcy.  Suddenly he trembled, as if he had been touched by a torpedo, and, profoundly agitated, almost lost countenance.  Was he as much astonished as he seemed?  For some time the Sannois Hill had become his favourite promenade, and he never went there without going as far as a certain spot whence he could see the front of a certain house, the window-shutters of which had remained during two months as though hermetically sealed.  It might be that the evening before he had found them open.  Induction is a scientific process with which Samuel Brohls are familiar.