With a man of Didier's character—assuming that there was a secret which made him suffer in his dreams as he lay beside the woman he loved—it could only be some trouble which it was his duty to hide from her but which, if she knew what it was, would not make her blush for him.
Ever since Didier's strange behavior at the beginning of what might be called their engagement, she fancied that there was something mysterious in his past life. She persisted in thinking that it was a story of some former woman—of some bad woman of course—who had taken advantage of Didier's goodness, and even now was trying to hold him up to ransom. Whether this was the explanation or not, she felt convinced that Didier was the victim.
At an early hour next morning Captain d'Haumont was in Nice. He waited to see Giselle at the corner of the Rue d'Angleterre and the Rue Bardin, pacing up and down outside a fashionable hairdressing and massage establishment. The sound of his footsteps coming and going put the porter in a general flutter.
Didier knew that Giselle had to be at the shop at nine o'clock and passed that way; and as he had no wish, in view of the incident of the evening before, for Mlle. Violette to know anything about the step he was taking, he waited for her in the street. To call at her own place at that hour would have been difficult to explain. At the same time he hoped that, impelled by some necessity of house-keeping, Giselle would make a very early appearance in the quarter.
As the minutes went by his impatience became painful to see. The porter at the establishment felt sorry for him; and he stopped some of the customers as they came in to point to the man on the pavement.
"Someone has made an appointment and failed to turn up!"
At a quarter to nine a lady who was in the habit of visiting the shop every day for her "high frequency" treatment, with the object, apparently, of renewing her youth in so far as it was possible, alighted from her car, and at the moment when she was about to enter the vestibule stopped with a face like stone.
Her eyes had fallen upon Captain d'Haumont running up to Giselle and entering into an animated talk with her.
"Well, Madame d'Erlande, the girl has turned up, and not a moment too soon," said the porter. "Just fancy, the poor man has been cooling his heels on the pavement for more than an hour."
"You don't mean to say so!"