he walked away to find the omnibus, "Belgium is not such a very large country, so we have some sort of clue after all. That young woman's heart is in the right place."

If to have her heart set upon her young mistress's happiness were to have that organ in the right place, then it is quite certain that what Doctor Leboeuf affirmed concerning Ma'mselle Victorine was entirely true. The bonne had long ago made up her mind that Madeleine and the English gentleman were made for each other, and that all things that kept them asunder were ridiculous scruples and vain chimeras. So she was resolved that it should not be her fault if Trelane wanted opportunities of pursuing his suit. The girl had told the truth when she said that all she knew concerning her mistress's intended journey was that it was into Belgium. Nor was she guilty of any breach of confidence in mentioning what she had only learnt by accident. If she had been told to what place Madame d'Elmar was bound and put upon parole, she would certainly have kept the secret at whatever cost to her inclination.

Doctor Leboeuf went back with all convenient speed to Paris, and in due time found himself once more in his own comfortable study at Versailles.

Arrived there, the good doctor sat down without loss of time, and wrote off to Trelane, who was in Paris, and already engaged in a fruitless endeavour

to trace the two English ladies. The doctor told him of all that had happened at the Belleville Cemetery, and transferred to him the end of the clue which Victorine had placed in his hands. "You had better," wrote the doctor, "visit, without delay, the principal towns of Belgium."

And what, the reader will perhaps ask, had all this time become of Trelane? How was it that he had not accompanied his friend the doctor to the Belleville Cemetery, or even supplied his place there? Surely had he done so, it would have been impossible for Miss d'Elmar to have eluded his vigilance.

.

But Trelane was otherwise occupied. He had determined to find Madeleine. He had pledged himself to do so. And now he was already engaged in the first necessary researches, little thinking what was then taking place at the cemetery, or how soon the tidings would reach him which would at least tell him which way to look.

Ignorant of the help so near at hand, Trelane had at this time undertaken no less a labour than that of inquiring at all the most respectable hotels in Faris for any ladies answering the description of Madame d'Elmar and her niece. And a more arduous and ungrateful task it would be difficult to conceive. First of all, it was by no means easy to get anybody to listen to his inquiries at all; then if he did succeed in getting a listener, this person would invariably turn out to be the especial

officer whose business it was not to know who was in the house or out of it; and so Trelane would be referred to some other individual, in search of whom the first official would scream up staircases and groan down pipes, and rush out into courtyards, with loud and dismal bellowings. This personage found, always began by stating that these ladies were in the house, and always ended by affirming with terrific violence that they were not.

It was a dreadful undertaking, this. A thing to keep a man busy all day, and leave him at the end of it with a sense that he had done nothing after all, a thankless miserable office in the doing, and leading to nothing when done!

It may be conceived, then, with what eager interest our Englishman devoured that letter of Dr. Leboeuf's when it came to hand; and how he blamed himself for not having gone to the cemetery himself instead of wasting his time in fruitless researches at Paris. The end of the letter was, however, more consolatory. It was no small thing that that hateful labour at Paris was now rendered unnecessary, and that his field of search was so much reduced in size. "Belgium" meant Antwerp, Ghent, or Brussels, and these three small towns it would not take long to examine thoroughly.

Trelane decided to try the last-named capital first, and the earliest train next morning bore him, with a hopeful heart, away from Paris.

CHAPTER XIII.

PREPARATIONS FOR PENITENCE.

THE little carnival at Brussels was in all its small glory. For a time, business was to a great extent suspended. The inhabitants of the town seemed all to have turned out into the streets, and the parc, the boulevard, and the Montagne de la Cour, were crowded with pedestrians. That is to say, there was a crowd for Brussels, or indeed for any place, except this over-grown London of ours, where it is fast becoming impossible to walk the streets, to attend any popular gathering, or to get up to a railwaystation, by reason of the monstrous crush of men and women, whom no bounds can hold in.

But the crowd at Brussels is a different affairit is within reasonable limits. It is never so great anywhere as to prevent your seeing easily whatever you may want to see. It is a crowd that makes one enjoy a spectacle more, not a mob that causes one to forego the most interesting sight in the world rather than encounter it. This lively moving crowd

was pretty well spread over the more modern parts of the town; but the more antiquated regions, such as the fine old Place with its glorious buildings, and the strictly commercial outskirts about the canalbasins, were very much deserted. So was the

greater part of that great ring of boulevard which surrounds the town, and of which not more than a fourth part is devoted to the purposes of a fashionable promenade.

Trelane did justice to both the solitary and populous portion of the town. Brussels was a favourite place with him, and a gay and charming little city it certainly is; indeed, there really seems to be but one drawback to Brussels, for which, moreover, the town itself is hardly responsible-it is full of scamps. Is there any place in Europe, Baden and perhaps Boulogne excepted, where so many doubtful characters assemble as at Brussels? Where does one see more wigs and beards savouring of disguise? where more obvious insolvency? where more rouge? Unhappily, too, the scamps here are for the most part English. It is actually almost a compromising admission in Brussels, to own that you are a native of Great Britain. Far from gaining you that reputation for wealth and liberality which it wins for you in other parts of the Continent, it is ten to one that the Belgian tradesmen, on hearing that you are English, will at once set you down as one with whom readymoney transactions alone are to be thought of.