Page:Marsh--The seen and the unseen.djvu/213

Rh confusion. He had eyes only for the girl quivering against the wall.

"My dear Gerbert, upon my soul, I beg your pardon. Won't—won't you introduce me to Madame Gerbert?"

"To Madame Gerbert?" Clasping his hands behind his back, M. Gerbert fell into a pose which, if we are to believe the painters, was a favourite one of the first Napoleon's. "It appears that you already are acquainted with Madame Gerbert."

"The acquaintance is of an informal kind."

"So I should imagine." The red-haired little man addressed himself to his girl wife. His words seemed to make her quiver as if they had been so many lashes from a whip. "So it is you. I thought that you had gone." "Alphonse!" was all she said.

"I imagined when, this morning, you left me, that you observed that you never would set eyes on me again."

"Alphonse!"

"You told me a few things, but was it because you forgot that you omitted to tell me that, so soon as you were outside my door, you were going to pay a visit to a strange man?"

"Alphonse!"

The woman put up her hands to cover her face. Mr. Kennard grasped his friend*s arm with, perhaps, unconscious vigour.

"I shall murder this little brute in a minute," he murmured.

As he whispered a response Mr. Nash disengaged his arm from his friend's too vigorous grasp.