M. Verduret and Prosper hastily laid it on the ground, regardless of the shrubs and vines they destroyed in doing so, and then concealed themselves among the trees, whence they could watch at once the front door and the outer gate.

Madeleine and Raoul appeared in the doorway.  Raoul set the lamp on the bottom step, and offered his hand to the girl; but she refused it with haughty contempt, which somewhat soothed Prosper’s lacerated heart.

This scornful behavior did not, however, seem to surprise or hurt Raoul.  He simply answered by an ironical gesture which implied, “As you please!”

He followed her to the gate, which he opened and closed after her; then he hurried back to the house, while Madeleine’s carriage drove rapidly away.

“Now, monsieur,” said Prosper, “you must tell me what you saw.  You promised me the truth no matter how bitter it might be.  Speak; I can bear it, be it what it may!”

“You will only have joy to bear, my friend.  Within a month you will bitterly regret your suspicions of to-night.  You will blush to think that you ever imagined Mlle. Madeleine to be intimate with a man like Lagors.”

“But, monsieur, appearances——­”

“It is precisely against appearances that we must be on our guard.  Always distrust them.  A suspicion, false or just, is always based on something.  But we must not stay here forever; and, as Raoul has fastened the gate, we shall have to climb back again.”

“But there is the ladder.”

“Let it stay where it is; as we cannot efface our footprints, he will think thieves have been trying to get into the house.”

They scaled the wall, and had not walked fifty steps when they heard the noise of a gate being unlocked.  The stood aside and waited; a man soon passed on his way to the station.

“That is Raoul,” said M. Verduret, “and Joseph will report to us that he has gone to tell Clameran what has just taken place.  If they are only kind enough to speak French!”

He walked along quietly for some time, trying to connect the broken chain of his deductions.

“How in the deuce,” he abruptly asked, “did this Lagors, who is devoted to gay society, come to choose a lonely country house to live in?”

“I suppose it was because M. Fauvel’s villa is only fifteen minutes’ ride from here, on the Seine.”

“That accounts for his staying here in the summer; but in winter?”

“Oh, in winter he has a room at the Hotel du Louvre, and all the year round keeps an apartment in Paris.”

This did not enlighten M. Verduret much; he hurried his pace.

“I hope our driver has not gone.  We cannot take the train which is about to start, because Raoul would see us at the station.”

Although it was more than an hour since M. Verduret and Prosper left the hack at the branch road, they found it waiting for them in front of the tavern.