the differences, leaving out the frankness.  Ricardo wondered in what street of Bohemia she dwelt.  He wondered still more when he saw her again half an hour afterwards at the entrance to the Villa des Fleurs.  She came down the long hall with Harry Wethermill at her side.  The couple were walking slowly, and talking as they walked with so complete an absorption in each other that they were unaware of their surroundings.  At the bottom of the steps a stout woman of fifty-five over-jewelled, and over-dressed and raddled with paint, watched their approach with a smile of good-humoured amusement.  When they came near enough to hear she said in French: 

“Well, Celie, are you ready to go home?”

The girl looked up with a start.

“Of course, madame,” she said, with a certain submissiveness which surprised Ricardo.  “I hope I have not kept you waiting.”

She ran to the cloak-room, and came back again with her cloak.

“Good-bye, Harry,” she said, dwelling upon his name and looking out upon him with soft and smiling eyes.

“I shall see you tomorrow evening,” he said, holding her hand.  Again she let it stay within his keeping, but she frowned, and a sudden gravity settled like a cloud upon her face.  She turned to the elder woman with a sort of appeal.

“No, I do not think we shall be here, tomorrow, shall we, madame?” she said reluctantly.

“Of course not,” said madame briskly.  “You have not forgotten what we have planned?  No, we shall not be here tomorrow; but the night after—­yes.”

Celia turned back again to Wethermill.

“Yes, we have plans for tomorrow,” she said, with a very wistful note of regret in her voice; and seeing that madame was already at the door, she bent forward and said timidly, “But the night after I shall want you.”

“I shall thank you for wanting me,” Wethermill rejoined; and the girl tore her hand away and ran up the steps.

Harry Wethermill returned to the rooms.  Mr. Ricardo did not follow him.  He was too busy with the little problem which had been presented to him that night.  What could that girl, he asked himself, have in common with the raddled woman she addressed so respectfully?  Indeed, there had been a note of more than respect in her voice.  There had been something of affection.  Again Mr. Ricardo found himself wondering in what street in Bohemia Celia dwelt—­and as he walked up to the hotel there came yet other questions to amuse him.

“Why,” he asked, “could neither Celia nor madame come to the Villa des Fleurs tomorrow night?  What are the plans they have made?  And what was it in those plans which had brought the sudden gravity and reluctance into Celia’s face?”

Ricardo had reason to remember those questions during the next few days, though he only idled with them now.

CHAPTER II

A CRY FOR HELP