CHAPTER XVI.
DEJEUNER A LA FOURCHETTE Woman is a creature between man and the angels.
-- _Honore de Balzac_.
A government agent, it seems, may also in part be little more than a man, after all.

In these singular surroundings I found myself not wholly tranquil....

At last toward morning, I must have slept.

It was some time after daybreak when I felt a hand upon my shoulder as I lay still partly clad.

Awakened suddenly, I arose and almost overthrew old Threlka, who stood regarding me with no expression whatever upon her brown and wrinkled countenance.