"What did you say the address was?"
"The Rue du Chevalier Bayard, Number 7."
Mr. Granger left the room without another word. He was not a man to remain long in doubt upon any question that could be solved by prompt investigation. He went out into the hall, where a footman sat reading Galignani in the lamplight.
"Has Mrs. Granger's carriage come back, Saunders?" he asked.
"Yes, sir; the carriage has been back a quarter of an hour. I were out with my mistress."
"Where is Mrs. Granger? In her own rooms?"
"No, sir; Mrs. Granger didn't come home in the carriage. We drove her to the Shangs Elysy first, sir, and afterwards to the Rue du Cavalier Baynard; and Mr. Fairfax, he came down and told me my mistress wouldn't want the carriage to take her home."
"Mr. Fairfax—in the Rue du Chevalier Bayard!"
"Yes, sir; he's an intimate friend of Mr. Hostin's, I believe. Leastways, we've seen him there very often."
George Fairfax! George Fairfax a frequent guest of those people whom she visited! That slumbering demon, which had been sheltered in Daniel Granger's breast so long, arose rampant at the sound of this name. George Fairfax, the man he suspected in the past; the man whom he had done his best to keep out of his wife's pathway in the present, but who, by some fatality, was not be avoided. Had Clarissa cultivated an intimacy with this Bohemian painter and his wife only for the sake of meeting George Fairfax without her husband's knowledge? To suppose this was to imagine a depth of depravity in the heart of the woman he loved. And he had believed her so pure, so noble a creature. The blow was heavy. He stood looking at his servant for a moment or so, paralysed; but except that one blank gaze, he gave no sign of his emotion. He only took up his hat, and went quietly out. "His looks was orful!" the man said afterwards in the servants' hall.