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56 I bade her good-night, and she passed slowly through the door, which I closed behind her. I turned again to the fire, saying:

“What would the duchess think of that?”

I did not even know what I thought of it myself; of one thing only I felt sure—that what I had heard of Marie Delhasse was not all that there was to learn about her.

I was lodged in a large room on the third floor, and when I awoke the bright sun beamed on the convent where, as I presume, Mme. de Saint-Maclou lay, and on the great Mount beyond it in the distance. I have never risen with a more lively sense of unknown possibilities in the day before me. These two women who had suddenly crossed my path, and their relations to the pale puffy-cheeked man at the little château, might well produce results more startling than had seemed to be offered even by such a freak as the original expedition undertaken by Gustave de Berensac and me. And now Gustave had fallen away and I was left to face the thing alone. For face it I must. My promise to the duchess bound me: had it not I doubt whether I should have gone; for my interest was not only in the duchess.

I had my coffee upstairs, and then, putting on my hat, went down for a stroll. So long as the duke did not come to Avranches, I could show my face boldly—and was not he busy preparing for his guests? I crossed the threshold of the hotel.

Just at the entrance stood Marie Delhasse; opposite her was a thickset fellow, neatly