Madame was out, he left a note, chez monsieur.'
Hortense found a sealed letter on the table in her husband's old study. It ran as follows:
'I was desolated at finding you out. I had a word to tell you. I have accepted an invitation to sup and pass the night at C——, thinking it would look well. For the same reason I have resolved to take the bull by the horns, and go aboard the steamer on my return, to welcome M. Bernier home—the privilege of an old friend. I am told the Armorique will anchor off the bar by daybreak. What do you think? But it's too late to let me know. Applaud my savoir faire—you will, at all events, in the end. You will see how it will smoothe matters.'
'Baffled! baffled!' hissed Madame, when she had read the note; 'God deliver me from my friends!' She paced up and down the room several times, and at last began to mutter to herself, as people often do in moments of strong emotion: 'Bah! but he'll never get up by daybreak. He'll oversleep himself, especially after to-night's supper. The other will be before him. .... Oh, my poor head, you've suffered too much to fail in the end!'
Josephine reappeared to offer to remove her mistress's things. The latter, in her desire to reassure herself, asked the first question that occurred to her. 'Was M. le Vicomte alone?'
'No, madame; another gentleman was with him—M. de Saulges, I think. They came in a hack, with two portmanteaus.'
Though I have judged best, hitherto, often from an exaggerated fear of trenching on the ground of fiction, to tell you what this poor lady did and said, rather than what she thought, I may disclose what passed in her mind now:
'Is he a coward? is he going to leave me? or is he simply going to pass these last hours in play and drink? He might have stayed with me. Ah! my friend, you do little for me, who do so much for you; who commit murder, and—Heaven help me!—suicide for you! .... But I suppose he knows best. At all events, he will make a night of it.'
When the cook came in late that evening, Josephine, who had sat up for her, said: 'You've no idea how Madame is looking. She's ten years older since this morning. Holy mother! what a day this has been for her!'
'Wait till to-morrow,' said the oracular Valentine.
Later, when the women went up to bed in the attic, they saw a light under Hortense's door, and during the night Josephine, whose chamber was above Madame's, and who couldn't sleep (for sympathy, let us say), heard movements beneath her, which told that her mistress was even more wakeful than she.
IV.
There was considerable bustle around the Armorique as she anchored outside the harbor of H——, in the early dawn of the following day. A gentleman, with an overcoat, walking stick, and small valise, came alongside in a little fishing boat, and got leave to go aboard.
'Is M. Bernier here?' he asked of one of the officers, the first man he met.
'I fancy he's gone ashore, sir. There was a boatman inquiring for him a few minutes ago, and I think he carried him off.
M. de Meyrau reflected a moment. Then he crossed over to the other side of the vessel, looking landward. Leaning over the bulwarks he saw an empty boat moored to the ladder which ran up the vessel's side.
'That's a town boat, isn't it?' he said to one of the hands standing by.
'Yes, sir.'
'Where's the master?'
'I suppose he'll be here in a moment. I saw him speaking to one of the officers just now.'
