eyes on the page again.
The questioner gave an exclamation, almost of horror. “Ye gods! He is reading Latin—for amusement!”
“A quarter past nine,” remarked Roland reflectively. “This time yesterday I was——”
“Don’t chatter so, Roland le preux! You disturb our Latinist . . . and also,” added Artamène in a lower tone, “run the risk of breaking into M. de Brencourt’s meditations. Look at him!”
The bandaged piquet-player, who still sat by the table, seemed indeed sunk in a profound abstraction, letting the idle cards fall one by one from his fingers. It was plain that he did not know what he was doing.
“I wager he is thinking of a woman,” whispered Artamène, bringing himself nearer to his friend. “It seems a quieting occupation; suppose we think of one too! But on whom shall I fix my thoughts . . . and you, Roland?”
A slight flush, invisible in the poor light, dyed young de Céligny’s cheek as he answered, with a suspicion of embarrassment, “I will think of that poor old lady next door. Will the Abbé exorcise her, do you think, from the spell of . . . what was it—Mirabel? And, by the way, what is Mirabel?”
“The name of a kind of plum, ignoramus,” replied Lucien du Boisfossé unexpectedly. He yawned as he spoke.
“Plainly our Lucien has been studying the Georgics also,” commented Artamène.
“An encyclopaedia would be more to the point!” retorted Roland. And raising his voice, he said, “Comte, what is Mirabel?”
The older man heard, even with a little start. He laid down the cards and came out of his reverie.
“Mirabel, gentlemen, is the name of a property and château near Paris, the château that was begun for François I. You may have heard of it. It belongs, or belonged, to the Duc de Trélan.”
“Trélan,” observed the young Chevalier de la Vergne reflectively. “I seem to remember the name in connection with the prison massacres in September, ’92. He was killed in them, I think?”
“No,” replied the Comte de Brencourt sombrely. “He was never in prison. He had emigrated. It was his wife who was butchered—with Mme de Lamballe.”
“Morbleu!” exclaimed Artamène. “And the Duc is still alive, then?”
“I believe so,” replied M. de Brencourt, even more sombrely.
“Where is he now?” asked Roland.
“Somewhere abroad—in England or Germany.”
“Worse than being dead!” observed Artamène, lying down and pulling the covering over him.
CHAPTER II
THE GIFT IS OFFERED
And next door, in a tidy but overcrowded bedroom, the Abbé Chassin, without any of the marks of his office, sat and listened to the babbling of an old spinster lady who was to terminate an uneventful and singularly respectable life as the messenger of destiny to not a few people.
The heavy curtains were pulled back from the side of the small fourposter by which the priest sat, and the candlelight fell soft and steady on the old, old blanched face within the neat capfrill, itself scarcely whiter than the visage it surrounded. On the waxlike countenance, amid all the signs of nearing death, was the imprint of that masterfulness which sometimes descends with age upon a certain type of old lady. And Mlle Magny was talking, talking continuously and pitifully, her eyes fixed, her shrivelled fingers pleating and plucking the edge of the sheet in the last fatal restlessness. Those hands were the only things that moved.
“I ought to have had it ready . . . but I did not know in time, I did not know! All these years to have had it in the family, and not to have known that it was there! But perhaps I shall be in time after all—they cannot have come back from the chapel yet, surely. But I must be quick, I must be quick! . . . and when the bride gives round the sword-knots and the fans to all the fine company I shall offer my gift to the young Duc. But I must be quick . . .”
And the withered hands, abandoning the sheet, began to fumble over the bed as if searching for something.
The Abbé bent forward and laid one of his own gently on the nearer.
“Cannot I help you, my daughter—cannot I do something for you?”
The eyes turned a moment; the brain, deeply absorbed in the past though it was, seemed to grasp this intrusion from the present, even to the pastoral mode of address.
“You are a priest, Monsieur? That is good—that is good! Yes, you can open this casket for me,” and she made as if she held it. “And inside you will find the wedding gift for the young Duc de Trélan—but you must be quick, quick! They will be back from the chapel! . . . Ah, I cannot find the key—I cannot turn the lock! My God, if I should be too late after all! Mon père, mon père, help me! . . . But, mon père, you are doing nothing!”
The Abbé looked round in desperation. He could see nothing that at all resembled a locked casket among the little treasures of the old lady’s room, the pincushions, the images of devotion, all the prim collection of a blameless lifetime. But in a moment the struggle with the imaginary lock came to an end, and as the tired hands relaxed a smile crept about Mlle Magny’s indrawn mouth.
“How handsome he is, Monseigneur Gaston!” she said in a tone of admiration. “My dear lady will be proud of him to-day! They will dance to-night after the wedding, and I shall see it all, as my lady wishes. But none of the fine ladies there will have given the bride such a gift as I shall give the bridegroom, though I am only his dear mother’s maid. . . . But why does the Abbé not bring it to me? When the bride gives round the swordknots and the fans——”
“Madame,” gently interrupted the priest, “if you will tell me where your gift is, I will bring it to you instantly.”
A look of cunning swept over the dying old woman’s face, and a faint sound that was like a chuckle came from her lips.
“Ah, no, I have hidden it well!” she replied unexpectedly, “hidden it nearly as securely as the treasure of Mirabel itself. You will not find it in a hurry, Clotilde!”
Who was Clotilde, wondered the priest? The niece with whom she lived, probably. But what was this about a ‘treasure’ in Mirabel?
“To think,” went on the old voice musingly, “that the precious paper was all these years in Cousin François’ dining-room, and all those scores of years before that, since the time it was stolen. And all the dead and gone Duchesses might have had the rubies to wear. I might have clasped the necklace round my sainted lady’s own neck. Now the new Duchesse will be the first to put it round her pretty throat.”
The priest gave a little shiver. Still that wedding eight-and-twenty years ago! . . . Since then the pretty throat of which she spoke had known a very different necklace . . . but of the same colour . . .
“But if you have hidden the rubies, Madame,” he hazarded, bewildered
