PART II.
CHAPTER I.
Madame Martineau's pension looked upon the gardens of the Luxembourg Palace, which in the dust and heat of July in Paris were as refreshing to all the senses as an oasis in the Sahara. The quarter is unfashionable, seldom visited by the flâneurs of the Champ Elysées and Boulevards, given over almost wholly to hard-workers with their brains or fingers, the gardens haunted by their respective wives, bonnes, and babies. This is what Elizabeth had sought, and what, after three days' search and inquiry at various artist-shops, she found—a safe refuge where she might run the least risk of being tracked by any one she knew. The number of her acquaintance was as yet small in her short journey through life, and among them there was not one French person. On the morning of the fifth day after her flight from Farley she had dismissed her maid, and without leaving her address at the hotel, had driven off with her boxes to the far distant quarter where she had secured two rooms. The doing this had caused much fluttering in the dovecote over which Madame Martineau presided.
