"Ah! she has already taken in her boots," she thought confusedly. "I shall be late for coffee." She gave her perfunctory knock, and turned the door-handle. But the door would not budge.
"Jacques! Jacques!" she cried, with a clammy fear at her heart. The garçon, who was pottering about with pails, opened the door with his key. An emptiness struck cold from the neat bed, the bare walls, the parted wardrobe-curtains that revealed nothing. She fled down the stairs, into the bureau.
"Madame Valière is not returned?" she cried.
Madame la Propriétaire shook her head.
"And she has not written?"
"No letter in her writing has come—for anybody."
"O mon Dieu! She has been murdered. She would go alone by night."
"She owes me three weeks' rent," grimly returned Madame la Propriétaire.
"What do you insinuate?" Madame Dépine's eyes flared.
Madame la Propriétaire shrugged her shoulders. "I am not at my first communion. I have grown grey in the service of lodgers. And this is how they reward me." She called Jacques, who had followed uneasily in Madame Dépine's wake. "Is there anything in the room?"