Heliobas then offered me his arm to take me to the carriage.  Prince Ivan accompanied us.  As the hall door opened in its usual noiseless manner, I perceived an elegant light brougham drawn by a pair of black horses, who were giving the coachman a great deal of trouble by the fretting and spirited manner in which they pawed the stones and pranced.  Before descending the steps I shook hands with Heliobas, and thanked him for the pleasant evening I had passed.

“We will try to make all your time with us pass as pleasantly,” he returned.  “Good-night!  What, Ivan,” as he perceived the Prince attiring himself in his great-coat and hat, “are you also going?”

“Yes, I am off,” he replied, with a kind of forced gaiety; “I am bad company for anyone to-night, and I won’t inflict myself upon you, Casimir.  Au revoir!  I will put mademoiselle into the carriage if she will permit me.”

We went down the steps together, Heliobas watching us from the open door.  As the Prince assisted me into the brougham, he whispered: 

“Are you one of them!”

I looked at him in bewilderment.

“One of them!” I repeated.  “What do you mean?”

“Never mind,” he muttered impatiently, as he made a pretence of covering me with the fur rugs inside the carriage:  “if you are not now, you will be, or Zara would not have kissed you.  If you ever have the chance ask her to think of me at my best.  Good-night.”

I was touched and a little sorry for him.  I held out my hand in silence.  He pressed it hard, and calling to the coachman, “36, Avenue du Midi,” stood on the pavement bareheaded, looking singularly pale and grave in the starlight, as the carriage rolled swiftly away, and the door of the Hotel Mars closed.

CHAPTER VIII.

A symphony in the air.

Within a very short time I became a temporary resident in the house of Heliobas, and felt myself to be perfectly at home there.  I had explained to Madame Denise the cause of my leaving her comfortable Pension, and she had fully approved of my being under a physician’s personal care in order to ensure rapid recovery; but when she heard the name of that physician, which I gave (in accordance with Zara’s instructions) as Dr. Casimir, she held up her fat hands in dismay.

“Oh, mademoiselle,” she exclaimed, “have you not dread of that terrible man?  Is it not he that is reported to be a cruel mesmerist who sacrifices everybody—­yes, even his own sister, to his medical experiments?  Ah, mon Dieu! it makes me to shudder!”

And she shuddered directly, as a proof of her veracity.  I was amused.  I saw in her an example of the common multitude, who are more ready to believe in vulgar spirit-rapping and mesmerism than to accept an established scientific fact.

“Do you know Dr. Casimir and his sister?” I asked her.