Once there, deaf to the solicitous inquiries of Joséphine, and almost, indeed, ignorant of her own purpose, Horatia gave the order to drive to Madame de Vigerie's house in the Rue de la Chaussée d'Antin, She had no conscious thoughts during the short transit. There was no time for them—no room in her head, round which a piercing band seemed to be drawn, suffocating them. But when the carriage began to slacken something external to herself said:
"You cannot go in. Ask at the porter's lodge if he is still there, and say you have come to drive him home. Then you will know!"
And she told the footman this. He disappeared under the archway. It might yet all be a horrible lie. The concierge would be astonished, would tell the man that M. de la Roche-Guyon never came there now.
The footman came back to the carriage and said respectfully:
"M. le Comte left about a quarter of an hour ago, Madame."
"I am too late, then," said Horatia quietly. "Home, please."
(2)
Four or five dried specimens of rare seaweeds, neatly fastened with slips of paper to little cards, lay before the Marquis de la Roche-Guyon on his writing-table, and he was agreeably occupied in identifying them, for he was contemplating a monograph on the algæ of France. He would shortly have to ring for a light, but, like all absorbed persons, he preferred working under conditions which were momentarily becoming worse to getting up to the bell. There is always a spark of hope, never realised, that the decline of daylight will somehow be arrested.
However, though Emmanuel would not interrupt himself, he was interrupted, with the last seaweed under a magnifying glass, by a knock.
"Come in," he called out, rather vexed. On removing his gaze from the brown fronds, he beheld his sister-in-law.