“What time did mademoiselle leave?” I inquired.

“Less than a quarter of an hour ago,” was the reply.

“Who brought the note to her?”

“A man, monsieur. Mademoiselle accompanied him in a cab.”

With a velocity which must have startled the grave and leisurely servant, I precipitated myself out of the house and back into the fiacre, which happily had not gone away. I told the cabman to drive to my hotel at his best speed.

To me Deschamps’ letter was in the highest degree suspicious. Rosa, of course, with the simplicity of a heart incapable of any baseness, had accepted it in perfect faith. But I remembered the words of Yvette, uttered in all solemnity: