"You left a few of your feathers in it, nevertheless," the banker
concluded with a wooden face and with the curtness of a man who
knows.
Monsieur George ought to have taken the very next train out of the
town but he yielded to the temptation to discover what had happened
to the house in the street of the Consuls after he and Dona Rita
had stolen out of it like two scared yet jubilant children. All he
discovered was a strange, fat woman, a sort of virago, who had,
apparently, been put in as a caretaker by the man of affairs. She
made some difficulties to admit that she had been in charge for the
last four months; ever since the person who was there before had
eloped with some Spaniard who had been lying in the house ill with
fever for more than six weeks. No, she never saw the person.
Neither had she seen the Spaniard. She had only heard the talk of
the street. Of course she didn't know where these people had gone.
She manifested some impatience to get rid of Monsieur George and
even attempted to push him towards the door. It was, he says, a
very funny experience. He noticed the feeble flame of the gas-jet
in the hall still waiting for extinction in the general collapse of
the world.
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