’A month.  By that time I shall have grown weary of my other two suitors.’

‘A month!  Really inflexible?’

Ethelberta had returned inside the window, and her answer was inaudible.  Ladywell and Neigh looked up, and their eyes met.  Both had been reluctant to remain where they stood, but they were too fascinated to instantly retire.  Neigh moved now, and Ladywell did the same.  Each saw that the face of his companion was flushed.

‘Come in and see me,’ said Ladywell quickly, before quite withdrawing his head.  ‘I am staying in this room.’

‘I will,’ said Neigh; and taking his hat he left Ethelberta’s apartment forthwith.

On entering the quarters of his friend he found him seated at a table whereon writing materials were strewn.  They shook hands in silence, but the meaning in their looks was enough.

‘Just let me write a note, Ladywell, and I’m your man,’ said Neigh then, with the freedom of an old acquaintance.

‘I was going to do the same thing,’ said Ladywell.

Neigh then sat down, and for a minute or two nothing was to be heard but the scratching of a pair of pens, ending on the one side with a more boisterous scratch, as the writer shaped ‘Eustace Ladywell,’ and on the other with slow firmness in the characters ‘Alfred Neigh.’

‘There’s for you, my fair one,’ said Neigh, closing and directing his letter.

‘Yours is for Mrs. Petherwin?  So is mine,’ said Ladywell, grasping the bell-pull.  ‘Shall I direct it to be put on her table with this one?’

‘Thanks.’  And the two letters went off to Ethelberta’s sitting-room, which she had vacated to receive Lord Mountclere in an empty one beneath.  Neigh’s letter was simply a pleading of a sudden call away which prevented his waiting till she should return; Ladywell’s, though stating the same reason for leaving, was more of an upbraiding nature, and might almost have told its reader, were she to take the trouble to guess, that he knew of the business of Lord Mountclere with her to-day.

‘Now, let us get out of this place,’ said Neigh.  He proceeded at once down the stairs, followed by Ladywell, who—­settling his account at the bureau without calling for a bill, and directing his portmanteau to be sent to the Right-bank railway station—­went with Neigh into the street.

They had not walked fifty yards up the quay when two British workmen, in holiday costume, who had just turned the corner of the Rue Jeanne d’Arc, approached them.  Seeing him to be an Englishman, one of the two addressed Neigh, saying, ’Can you tell us the way, sir, to the Hotel Bold Soldier?’

Neigh pointed out the place he had just come from to the tall young men, and continued his walk with Ladywell.

Ladywell was the first to break silence.  ’I have been considerably misled, Neigh,’ he said; ’and I imagine from what has just happened that you have been misled too.’