October 6th.

She comes back to-morrow.  Antoinette and I have been devising a welcome.  The good soul has filled the house with flowers, and, usurping Stenson’s functions, has polished furniture and book backs and silver and has hung fresh blinds and scrubbed and scoured until I am afraid to walk about or sit down lest I should tarnish the spotless brightness of my surroundings.

“You have forgotten one thing, Antoinette,” I remarked, satirically.  “You have omitted to strew the front steps with rose-leaves.”

“I would cover them with my body for the dear angel to walk upon as she entered,” said Antoinette.

“That would scarcely be rose-leaves,” I murmured.

Antoinette laughed.  “And Monsieur then!  He is just as bad.  Has he not put new curtains in the room of Mademoiselle, and a new toilette table, and a set of silver brushes and combs and I know not what, as for the toilette of a princess?  And the eiderdown in pink satin? Regardez-moi ca! Monsieur can no longer say that it is I alone who spoil the dear angel.”

“Monsieur,” said I, at a loss for a better retort, “will say whatever Monsieur pleases.”

“It is indeed the right of Monsieur,” said Antoinette, respectfully, but with a twinkle in her eye not devoid of significance.

does the crafty old woman suspect?  Perhaps my preparations for Carlotta’s return have been inordinate, for they have extended to the transformation of the sitting-room downstairs into a lady’s boudoir.  I have been busy this happy week.  But what care I?  It will not be long before I have to say to her, “Antoinette, there is going to be a wedding.”

I must be on my guard lest, in the transports of her joy, she clasp me to her capacious bosom.!

CHAPTER XIV

October 7th.

At Paddington I came upon Sebastian Pasquale lounging about the arrival platform.  As I had not seen or heard of him since the end of July I had concluded that he was wandering as usual over the globe.  He greeted me effusively, holding out both hands in his foreign fashion.

“My dear old Ordeyne! who would have thought of meeting you here?  What wind blows you to Paddington?”

“I expect Carlotta by the Plymouth Express.”

“The fair Carlotta?  And how is she?  And what is she doing at Plymouth?”

In the middle of my explanation he pulled out his watch.

“By Jove!  I must get to the next platform and catch my train to Ealing.  I was just killing time about the station.  I like seeing a train come in—­the gleam and smoke and rush and whirr of the evil-looking thing—­and the sudden metamorphosis of its sleek sides into mouths belching forth humanity.  I think of Hades.  This, by the way, isn’t a bad representation of it—­the up-to-date Hades.  They’ve got a railway bridge now across the Styx, and Charon has a gold band around his cap, and this might be the arrival platform of the damned souls.”