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the clock, and put his watch back in his pocket. A few seconds elapsed. And then the crowd opened out around the lawn to make way for two carriages that had just passed through the park gates, each drawn by two horses. They were two of those regimental wagons which carry the cooking utensils of the officers' mess and the soldiers' kits. They stopped in front of the steps. A quartermaster sergeant jumped down from the box of the first wagon and asked for M. Devanne.
    Devanne ran down the steps. Under the awnings, carefully packed and wrapped up, were his pictures, his furniture, his works of art of all kinds.
    The sergeant replied to the questions put to him by producing
    the order which the adjutant on duty had given him, and which the adjutant himself had received that morning in the orderly room. The order stated that No. 2 Company of the Fourth Battalion was to see that the goods and chattels deposited at the Halleux crossroads, in the Forest of Arques, were delivered at three o'clock to M. Georges Devanne, the owner of Thibermesnil Castle. It bore the signature of Colonel Beauvel.
    "I found everything ready for us at the crossroads," added the sergeant, "laid out on the grass, under the charge of ... anyone passing. That struck me as queer, but ... well, sir, the order was plain enough!"
    One of the officers examined the signature: it was a perfect copy,
    but forged.
    The band had stopped. The wagons were emptied, and the furniture carried indoors.
    In the midst of this excitement Nellie Underwood was left standing alone at one end of the terrace. She was grave and anxious, full of vague thoughts, which she did not seek to formulate. Suddenly she saw Velmont coming up to her. She wished to avoid him, but the corner of the balustrade that borders the terrace hemmed her in on two sides, and a row of great tubs of shrubs — orange trees, laurels, and bamboos — left her no other way of escape than that by which Velmont was approaching. She did not move. A ray of sunlight quivered on her golden hair, shaken by the frail leaves of a bamboo plant. She heard a soft voice say:
    "I have kept the promise I made you last night."
    Arsene Lupin stood by her side, and there was no one else near
    them.
    He repeated, in a hesitating attitude and a timid voice:
    "I have kept the promise I made you last night."
    He expected a word of thanks, a gesture at least, to prove the interest which she took in his action. She was silent.
    Her scorn irritated Arsene Lupin, and at the same time he received a profound sense of all that separated him from Nellie, now that she knew the truth. He would have liked to exonerate himself, to seek excuses, to show his life in its bolder and greater aspects. But the words jarred upon him before they were uttered, and he felt the absurdity and the impertinence of any explanation.
    He gave a bitter smile:
    "You are right," he said. "What has been will always be. Arsene Lupin is and can be no one but Arsene Lupin; and not even a memory can exist between you and him . . . Forgive me ... I ought to have understood that my very presence near you must seem an outrage. . . ."
    He made way for her, hat in hand, and Nellie passed before him along the balustrade. He felt tempted to hold her back, to beseech her. His courage failed him, and he followed her with his eyes, as he had done on the day long past when she crossed the gangplank on their arrival at New York. She went up the stairs that led to the door. For another instant her dainty figure was outlined against the marble of the entrance hall. Then he saw her no more.
    "Come," he said to himself, "I have nothing more to do here. Let us see to our retreat. The more so as, if Holmlock Shears takes up the matter, it may become too hot for me."
    The park was deserted, save for a group of gendarmes standing near the lodge at the entrance. Lupin plunged into the shrubbery, scaled the wall, and took the nearest way to the station — a path winding through the fields. He