Every day when he came home to dinner, M. Lenoble expected to behold a
vacant place by the side of his hostess; every day he was pleasantly
disappointed. The pale hopeless face was still to be seen, ghost-like, at
that noisy board. The face was more pale, more hopeless, as it seemed to
Gustave, every day he looked upon it.

He asked Madame Magnotte when the English lady was going to leave, but
she could not tell.

"She talks of leaving from day to day," said madame; "it will no doubt be
soon. I am sorry to lose her. She is very gentle, and gives no trouble to
any one. But she is sad--ah, how sad she is! She has suffered, monsieur."

Gustave agreed to this. Yes, she had suffered; but what, and how?

He watched her closely, but she was always the same. She no longer spent
her evenings in the salon, but in her own apartment. He saw her only at
dinner-time, and had no opportunity of speaking to her.

At last the day came upon which he missed her at the usual hour. He sat
through the tedious meal without speaking; eating a little, drinking a
little, mechanically, but with no consciousness of what he ate or drank.
There was a mist before his eyes, a confusion of voices in his ears; but
the faculties of sight and hearing seemed suspended. The agony he
suffered during that miserable hour was bitter as death.

"O, my God, how I love her!" he said to himself, while Raoul's bass roar
brayed in his ear on one side, and Leon's shrill squeal tortured him on
the other.