Then as Christian left the room she sank back in her chair, with creases in her forehead, and began languidly to cut a magazine.  ‘Poor Christian!’ she thought, ’how hardly she does take it!  I am sorry for her; but perhaps it’s just as well, as things are turning out.  Psychologically it is interesting!’

Christian found her things packed, and the two servants waiting.  In a few minutes they were driving to the station.  She made Dominique take the seat opposite.

“Well?” she asked him.

Dominique’s eyebrows twitched, he smiled deprecatingly.

“M’mselle, Mr. Treffry told me to hold my tongue.”

“But you can tell me, Dominique; Barbi can’t understand.”

“To you, then, M’mselle,” said Dominique, as one who accepts his fate; “to you, then, who will doubtless forget all that I shall tell you—­my master is not well; he has terrible pain here; he has a cough; he is not well at all; not well at all.”

A feeling of dismay seized on the girl.

“We were a caravan for all that night,” Dominique resumed.  “In the morning by noon we ceased to be a caravan; Signor Harz took a mule path; he will be in Italy—­certainly in Italy.  As for us, we stayed at San Martino, and my master went to bed.  It was time; I had much trouble with his clothes, his legs were swollen.  In the afternoon came a signor of police, on horseback, red and hot; I persuaded him that we were at Paneveggio, but as we were not, he came back angry—­Mon Die! as angry as a cat.  It was not good to meet him—­when he was with my master I was outside.  There was much noise.  I do not know what passed, but at last the signor came out through the door, and went away in a hurry.”  Dominique’s features were fixed in a sardonic grin; he rubbed the palm of one hand with the finger of the other.  “Mr. Treffry made me give him whisky afterwards, and he had no money to pay the bill—­that I know because I paid it.  Well, M’mselle, to-day he would be dressed and very slowly we came as far as Auer; there he could do no more, so went to bed.  He is not well at all.”

Christian was overwhelmed by forebodings; the rest of the journey was made in silence, except when Barbi, a country girl, filled with the delirium of railway travel, sighed:  “Ach! gnadige Fraulein!” looking at Christian with pleasant eyes.

At once, on arriving at the little hostel, Christian went to see her uncle.  His room was darkened, and smelt of beeswax.

“Ah!  Chris,” he said, “glad to see you.”

In a blue flannel gown, with a rug over his feet, he was lying on a couch lengthened artificially by chairs; the arm he reached out issued many inches from its sleeve, and showed the corded veins of the wrist.  Christian, settling his pillows, looked anxiously into his eyes.

“I’m not quite the thing, Chris,” said Mr. Treffry.  “Somehow, not quite the thing.  I’ll come back with you to-morrow.”