Ste. Marie met Hartley as he expected to do, at lunch, and they talked over the possibilities of the Dinard and Deauville expedition. In the end they decided that Ste. Marie should go alone, but that he was to telegraph, later on, if the clew looked promising. Hartley had two or three investigations on foot in Paris, and stayed on to complete these. Also he wished, as soon as possible, to see Helen Benham and explain Ste. Marie's ride on the galloping pigs. Ten days had elapsed since that evening, but Miss Benham had gone into the country the next day to make a visit at the De Saulnes' château on the Oise.
So Ste. Marie packed a portmanteau with clothes and things, and departed by a mid-afternoon train to Dinard, and toward five Richard Hartley walked down to the rue de I'Université. He thought it just possible that Miss Benham might by now have returned to town, but if not he meant to have half an hour's chat with old David Stewart, whom he had not seen for some weeks.
At the door he learned that mademoiselle was that very day returned and was at home. So he went in to the drawing-room, reserving his visit to old David until later. He found the room divided into two camps. At one side Mrs. Benham conversed in melancholic monotones with two elderly French ladies who were clad in depressing black of a dowdiness surpassed only in English provincial towns. It was as if the three mourned together over the remains of some dear one who lay dead among them. Hartley bowed low, with an uncontrollable shiver, and turned to the tea-table, where Miss Benham sat in the seat of authority, flanked by a young American lady whom he had met before, and by Baron de Vries, whom he had not seen since the evening of the De Saulnes' dinner-party.
Miss Benham greeted him with evident pleasure, and to his great delight remembered just how he liked his tea--three pieces of sugar and no milk. It always flatters a man when his little tastes of this sort are remembered. The four fell at once into conversation together, and the young American lady asked Hartley why Ste. Marie was not with him.
"I thought you two always went about together," she said--"were never seen apart and all that--a sort of modern Damon and Phidias."
Hartley caught Baron de Vries' eye, and looked away again hastily.
"My--ah, Phidias," said he, resisting an irritable desire to correct the lady, "got mislaid to-day. It sha'n't happen again, I promise you. He's a very busy person just now, though. He hasn't time for social dissipation. I'm the butterfly of the pair."
The lady gave a sudden laugh.
"He was busy enough the last time I saw him," she said, crinkling her eyelids. She turned to Miss Benham. "Do you remember that evening we were going home from the Madrid and motored round by Montmartre to see the fête?"
"Yes," said Miss Benham, unsmiling, "I remember."