"Show it to me, then."
"I am a poor man, monsieur, and cannot afford to work for nothing."
"How much?" Barrington asked.
The servant named a price, and if he received many such fees he would not long be able to call himself a poor man. Barrington paid him, and was taken upstairs and shown Jeanne's room. He did not cross the threshold, hardly glanced in at the door, in fact, but grumbled at its size and its position. He would have liked this room or that. Why not one at the end of this passage? He liked to be in a light passage.
"It is not a pleasant outlook this side, monsieur, stable roofs, a bare wall and no garden."
"Truly, a prospect to drive a man to despair," growled Barrington, looking from the passage window on to the roofs of outbuildings a few feet below, and across at the house which these buildings joined, and which was at the end of a row of houses facing the street. There was only one window in that opposite wall, twelve or fourteen feet above these outbuildings, a dirty window, fast shut.
"I think very little of Monsieur Legrand's asylum," said Barrington, turning away in disgust. "I shall tell him so."
"Certainly, monsieur, if it will ease your mind."
"He is out, you say?"
"Since early this morning."