"Eh! you will find him at the Casino," said the stout proprietress.
Nancy asked to be shown to her husband's room, but as it turned out to be a very small mansarde at the top of the house, Nancy took another room, and there Anne-Marie went to bed under the mosquito-netting, and was asleep at once. Nancy went downstairs. The salon was dark. Madame la Propriétaire sat in the garden with an old lady and a little fat boy.
"If you want to go to the Casino," she said, "I will look after the little angel upstairs!"
But Nancy said: "Oh no, thank you."
Then the old lady said: "Allez donc! Allez donc! Vous savez bien les hommes!... Ça pourrait ne pas rentrer." Then she added: "I have been here twelve years. This, my little grandson, was born here. You can go, tranquillement. The petit ange will be all right."
Nancy went upstairs for her hat. Anne-Marie was asleep and never stirred. So Nancy went through the little garden again with hesitant feet, and turned her face to the Casino. The streets were almost empty. She was in her dark travelling-dress, and nobody noticed her. As she passed the Hôtel de Paris she saw the people dining at the tables with the little red lights lit. In the square round the flower-beds other people sat in twos and threes; and over the way, in the Café de Paris, the Tziganes in red coats were playing "Sous la Feuillée."
Nancy suddenly felt frightened and sad. What was she doing here, all alone, at night in this unknown place, and little Anne-Marie sleeping in that large bed all alone in a strange hotel? She felt as if she were in a dream, and hurried on, dizzy and scared. A man, passing, said: "Bonsoir, mademoiselle;" and Nancy ran on with a beating heart, up the steps and into the brilliantly lighted atrium. Two men in scarlet and white livery stopped her, and asked what she wanted; then they showed her into an open room on the left, where men that looked like judges and lawyers sat in two rows behind desks waiting for her.
She stepped uncertainly up to one of them—he was bald with a pointed beard—and said: "Pardon ... I am looking for Monsieur della Rocca."
"Ah, indeed," said the man with the beard. "I have not the pleasure of his acquaintance." And a fair man sitting near him smiled.
"Have you no idea where I can find him?" said Nancy, blushing until tears came to her eyes.