"I did not wish it known for a while, and even then, it appears, I spoke too soon," said Césarine gloomily.
"You did not want me to know, madame?" questioned the servant in surprise and with a trace of suspicion.
"Not even you," and hanging her head, she sank into meditation, not pleasant, to judge by her hopeless expression.
The servant, who had the phlegmatic brain of her people, was stupefied for a little time, then, recovering some vivacity, she inquired hesitatingly as though she was never at her ease with the subtle woman.
"Is madame going away without more than a glance around?"
"Why do you talk such nonsense?" queried her mistress, looking up abruptly.
The girl intimated that the mysterious entrance portended secrecy to be preserved. And, again, the lady had come without baggage, even so much as in eloping from home. But Madame Clemenceau explained, with the most natural air in the world, that she had walked over from the railway station, where her impedimenta remained.
"Walked half a mile?" ejaculated Hedwig, who knew that the speaker had been vigorous enough at Munich, but, since her marriage, and living at Montmorency, she had assumed the popular air of a semi-invalid, "So you are strong in health again?"
"Yes; but I have been very unwell," replied the lady, sinking back in the chair as she remembered the course she had intended to adopt. "I was very nearly at death's door," she sighed. "I really believed that I should nevermore see any of you, my poor husband and you others. Do you think that anything hut a severe ailment could excuse me for my strange silence—my apparently wicked absence?"
Hedwig went on going through the form of dusting the huge metal-bound chest, which had attracted the mistress' eyes as a new article of furniture. Had her husband turned miser since Fortune had whirled on her wheel at his door as soon as she quitted it? It was not Hedwig's place, and it was not in her power to solve enigmas, so she answered nothing.