The Duke looked from one to the other of them with curious,
searching eyes: "I find all this so interesting," he said.

"We do not take much notice of these checks; they do not depress us
for a moment," said M. Formery, with some return of his old
grandiloquence. "We pause hardly for an instant; then we begin to
reconstruct--to reconstruct."

"It's perfectly splendid of you," said the Duke, and his limpid eyes
rested on M. Formery's self-satisfied face in a really affectionate
gaze; they might almost be said to caress it.

Guerchard looked out of the window at a man who was carrying a hod-
full of bricks up one of the ladders set against the scaffolding of
the building house. Something in this honest workman's simple task
seemed to amuse him, for he smiled.

Only the inspector, thinking of the unexamined fireplace, looked
really depressed.

"We shan't get anything out of this woman till she wakes," said M.
Formery, "When she does, I shall question her closely and fully. In
the meantime, she may as well be carried up to her bedroom to sleep
off the effects of the chloroform."

Guerchard turned quickly: "Not her own bedroom, I think," he said
gently.

"Certainly not--of course, not her own bedroom," said M. Formery
quickly.