Afterwards, in quick succession, came the stir and bustle of landing and the journey to Paris.  They arrived too late to make any inquiries that night, but ten o’clock the following morning found them outside the building where Michael had his apartment.

“Oh, Dan!”—­Gillian was seized with sudden panic.  “Supposing he is here, after all, and has deliberately not answered Lady Arabella’s letter?”

“I shouldn’t suppose anything so foolish.  Michael may be many kinds of a fool—­artists very often are, I believe.  It’s part of the temperament.  But whatever he proposed to do regarding Magda, there’s no reason in the world to suppose he wouldn’t answer Lady Arabella’s letter.”

“No—­no.  Perhaps not,” agreed Gillian hurriedly.  But it was in rather a shaky voice that she asked to see Mr. Quarrington when finally they found themselves confronted by the concierge.

“Monsieur Quarrington?” Hands, shoulders, and eyebrows all seemed to gesticulate at once as madame la concierge made answer.  “But he has been gone from here two—­no, three months.  Perhaps madame did not know?”

“No,” said Gillian.  “I didn’t know.  But I thought he might possibly be away, because I—­I have had no answer to a letter I wrote him.”

“What misfortune!”

The concierge regarded Gillian with a pair of shrewd, gimlet eyes while a stream of inquiry and comment issued from her lips.  Madame was the sister of monsieur, perhaps?  Truly, they resembled each other!  One could see at a glance.  No, not a sister?  Ah, a friend, then?  And there had been no answer to a letter!  But monsieur had left an address.  Oh, yes.  And all letters were forwarded.  She herself saw to that.

At last Gillian managed to stem the torrent of garrulity and interposed a question concerning the telegram she had sent.

A telegram!  Now that was another affair altogether.  Yes, the concierge remembered the telegram.  She had opened it to see if it were of life or death importance, in which case she would have, of course, telegraphed its contents to monsieur at his present address.

Gillian was nearly crying with impatience as the woman’s voluble tongue ran on complacently.

“Then you did send it on?” she managed to interpolate at last.

The letter—­yes.  Not, of course, the telegram.  That would have been a needless expense seeing that monsieur would already have had the letter, since all the letters were sent on. All! She, Madame Ribot, could vouch for that.

At the end of half an hour Gillian succeeded in extracting Michael’s address from amid the plethora of words and, bidding the voluble concierge bon jour, she and Storran beat a masterly retreat.

It appeared that Michael had been commissioned to paint the portrait of some Italian society beauty and had gone to Rome.  Gillian screwed up her small face resolutely.

“I shall go to Rome!” she announced succinctly.  There was a definite defiance in her tone, and Storran concealed a smile.