“She is not alone, then?”

“No, the Nabob is with her.  They are having a sitting for the portrait.”

“And why this mystery?  It is a very singular thing.”  He commenced to walk backward and forward, evidently very angry, but containing his wrath.

At last he burst forth.

It was an unheard-of impropriety to let a girl thus shut herself in with a man.

He was surprised that one so serious, so devoted as Constance—­What did it look like?

The old lady looked at him with stupefaction.  As though Felicia were like other girls!  And then what danger was there with the Nabob, so staid a man and so ugly?  Besides, Jenkins ought to know quite well that Felicia never consulted anybody, that she always had her own way.

“No, no, it is impossible!  I cannot tolerate this,” exclaimed the Irishman.

And, without paying any further heed to the dancer, who raised her arms to heaven as a call upon it to witness what was about to happen, he moved towards the studio; but, instead of entering immediately, he softly half-opened the door and raised a corner of the hangings, whereby the portion of the room in which the Nabob was posing became visible to him, although at a considerable distance.

Jansoulet, seated without cravat and with his waist-coat open, was talking apparently in some agitation and in a low voice.  Felicia was replying in a similar tone, in laughing whispers.  The sitting was very animated.  Then a silence, a silken rustle of skirts, and the artist, going up to her model, turned down his linen collar all round with familiar gesture, allowing her light hand to run over the sun-tanned skin.

That Ethiopian face on which the muscles stood out in the very intoxication of health, with its long drooping eyelashes as of some deer being gently stroked in its sleep; the bold profile of the girl as she leaned over those strange features in order to verify their proportions; then a violent, irresistible gesture, clutching the delicate hand as it passed and pressing it to two thick, passionate lips.  Jenkins saw all that in one red flash.

The noise that he made in entering caused the two personages instantly to resume their respective positions, and, in the strong light which dazzled his prying eyes, he saw the young girl standing before him, indignant, stupefied.

“Who is that?  Who has taken the liberty?” and the Nabob, on his platform, with his collar turned down, petrified, monumental.

Jenkins, a little abashed, frightened by his own audacity, murmured some excuses.  He had something very urgent to say to M. Jansoulet, a piece of news which was most important and would suffer no delay.  “He knew upon the best authority that certain decorations were to be bestowed on the 16th of March.”

Immediately the face of the Nabob, that for a moment had been frowning, relaxed.

“Ah! can it be true?”