After he had
been in Paris three days, he knocked at Mrs. Vivian's door.
CHAPTER XXII
It was opened by the little waiting-maid whom he had seen at Blanquais,
and who looked at him very hard before she answered his inquiry.
"You see I have found Mrs. Vivian's dwelling, though you would n't give
me the address," Bernard said to her, smiling.
"Monsieur has put some time to it!" the young woman answered dryly. And
she informed him that Madame was at home, though Mademoiselle, for whom
he had not asked, was not.
Mrs. Vivian occupied a diminutive apartment at the summit of one of
the tall white houses which ornament the neighborhood of the Arc de
Triomphe. The early days of September had arrived, but Paris was still
a city of absentees. The weather was warm and charming, and a certain
savour of early autumn in the air was in accord with the somewhat
melancholy aspect of the empty streets and closed shutters of this
honorable quarter, where the end of the monumental vistas seemed to
be curtained with a hazy emanation from the Seine. It was late in
the afternoon when Bernard was ushered into Mrs. Vivian's little
high-nestling drawing-room, and a patch of sunset tints, faintly red,
rested softly upon the gilded wall.
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