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“I cannot see the use of all these instructions,” said Silas.

“I believe you are already beginning to treat me as a master,” she cried, tapping him with her fan upon the arm. “Patience, patience! that should come in time. A woman loves to be obeyed at first, although afterwards she finds her pleasure in obeying. Do as I ask you, for Heaven’s sake, or I will answer for nothing. Indeed, now I think of it,” she added, with the manner of one who has just seen further into a difficulty, “I find a better plan of keeping importunate visitors away. Tell the porter to admit no one for you, except a person who may come that night to claim a debt; and speak with some feeling, as though you feared the interview, so that he may take your words in earnest.”

“I think you may trust me to protect myself against intruders,” he said, not without a little pique.

“That is how I should prefer the thing arranged,” she answered coldly. “I know you men; you think nothing of a woman’s reputation.”

Silas blushed and somewhat hung his head; for the scheme he had in view had involved a little vain-glorying before his acquaintances.

“Above all,” she added, “do not speak to the porter as you come out.”

“And why?” said he. “Of all your instructions, that seems to me the least important.”

“You at first doubted the wisdom of some of the others, which you now see to be very necessary,” she replied. “Believe me, this also has its uses; in time you will see them; and what am I to think of your affection, if you refuse me such trifles at our first interview?”

Silas confounded himself in explanations and apologies; in the middle of these she looked up at the clock and clapped her hands together with a suppressed scream.

“Heavens!” she cried, “is it so late? I have not an instant to lose. Alas, we poor women, what slaves we are! What have I not risked for you already?”

And after repeating her directions, which she artfully combined with caresses and the most abandoned looks, she bade him farewell and disappeared among the crowd.

The whole of the next day Silas was filled with a sense of great importance; he was now sure she was a countess; and when evening came he minutely obeyed her orders and was at the corner of the Luxembourg Gardens by the hour appointed. No one was there. He waited nearly half-an-hour, looking in the face of every one who passed or loitered near the spot; he even visited the neighbouring corners of the Boulevard and made a complete circuit of the garden railings; but there was no beautiful countess to throw herself into his arms. At last, and most reluctantly, he began to retrace his steps towards his hotel. On the way he remembered the words he had heard pass between Madame Zephyrine and the blond young man, and they gave him an indefinite uneasiness.

“It appears,” he reflected, “that every one has to tell lies to our porter.”

He rang the bell, the door opened before him, and the porter in his bed-clothes came to offer him a light.

“Has he gone?” inquired the porter.

“He? Whom do you mean?” asked Silas, somewhat sharply, for he was irritated by his disappointment.

“I did not notice him go out,” continued the porter, “but I trust you paid him. We do not care, in this house, to have lodgers who cannot meet their liabilities.”

“What the devil do you mean?” demanded Silas rudely. “I cannot understand a word of this farrago.”

“The short blond young man who came for his debt,” returned the other. “Him it is I mean. Who else should it be, when I had your orders to admit no one else?”

“Why, good God, of course he never came,” retorted Silas.

“I believe what I believe,” returned the porter, putting his tongue into his cheek with a most roguish air.