“Where may I have the honor of coming to thank you?” asked Jeanne.
“We will let you know,” replied the elder lady, going quickly down the stairs.
Madame de la Motte ran back into her room, impatient to examine her rouleau, but her foot struck against something, and stooping to pick it up, she saw a small flat gold box.
She was some time before she could open it, but having at last found the spring, it flew open and disclosed the portrait of a lady possessing no small beauty. The coiffure was German, and she wore a collar like an order. An M and a T encircled by a laurel wreath ornamented the inside of the box. Madame de la Motte did not doubt, from the resemblance of the portrait to the lady who had just left her, that it was that of her mother, or some near relation.
She ran to the stairs to give it back to them; but hearing the street-door shut, she ran back, thinking to call them from the window, but arrived there only in time to see a cabriolet driving rapidly away. She was therefore obliged to keep the box for the present, and turned again to the little rouleau.
When she opened it, she uttered a cry of joy, “Double louis, fifty double louis, two thousand and four hundred francs!” and transported at the sight of more gold than she had ever seen before in her life, she remained with clasped hands and open lips. “A hundred louis,” she repeated; “these ladies are then very rich. Oh! I will find them again.”
CHAPTER IV.
BELUS.
Madame de la Motte was not wrong in thinking that the cabriolet which she saw driving off contained the two ladies who had just left her.
They had, in fact, found it waiting for them on their exit. It was lightly built, open and fashionable, with high wheels, and a place behind for a servant to stand. It was drawn by a magnificent bay horse of Irish breed, short-tailed, and plump, which was driven by the same man whom we have already heard addressed by the name of Weber. The horse had become so impatient with waiting, that it was with some difficulty that Weber kept him stationary.
When he saw the ladies, he said, “Madame, I intended to bring Scipio, who is gentle and easy to manage, but unluckily he received an injury last evening, and I was forced to bring Bélus, and he is rather unmanageable.”