The serving-maid tried to stop her.
"There's a gentleman in there," she said, "who wishes to be alone."
"Oh!" said the woman quietly, "that is quite all right. I am travelling in his company."
With that she opened the door and went into the inner room.
There was so much noise going on in the coffee-room at the time that no one was able to state positively afterwards how Darnier greeted the intruder, and whether or no her statement was true that she was travelling in his company. Certain it is that, after a quarter of an hour or so, she came out again, as quietly, as silently as she had come, re-crossed the coffee-room, and went out, leaving this time a curious, almost uncanny air of mystery behind her.
"I have never been fond of these female callotins myself," said one of the young officers after a while.
"I cannot stand people who make no noise when they walk," asserted the worthy bourgeois of Evreux.
The well-to-do farmer's wife, conscious of undisputed respectability, added with some acidity:
"Strange that a professed nun should be travelling alone in a man's company."
After that comments on the occurrence became freer and more ribald, and very soon the absentee had not a shred of reputation left in the minds of the worthy but intensely bored people congregated around the festive board of the "Cheval Blanc."