to wait in any of the foreign hotels in which she and her husband had
stayed during the last three weeks, Madame Poulain reappeared, bearing a
tray in her large, powerful hands.

She put the tray down on the bed, and she was already making her way
quickly, silently to the door, when Nancy called out urgently, "Madame?
Madame Poulain! Has my husband gone out!"

And then she checked herself, and tried to convey the same question in her
difficult French--"Mon mari?" she said haltingly. "Mon mari?"

But Madame Poulain only shook her head, and hurried out of the room,
leaving the young Englishwoman oddly discomfited and surprised.

It was evidently true what Jack had said--that tiresome Exhibition had
turned everything in Paris, especially the hotels, topsy-turvy. Madame
Poulain was cross and tired, run off her feet, maybe; her manner, too,
quite different now from what it had been the night before.

Nancy Dampier got up and dressed. She put on a pale blue linen gown which
Jack admired, and a blue straw hat trimmed with grey wings which Jack said
made her look like Mercury.

She told herself that there could be no reason why she shouldn't venture
out of her room and go downstairs, where there must surely be some kind of
public sitting-room.

Suddenly remembering the young American's interchange of words with his
sister, she wondered, smiling to herself, if she would ever see them again.
How cross the young man's idle words had made Jack! Dear, jealous Jack, who