"Twenty past two!" he exclaims. "I really cannot wake that poor fellow!"
Through the deep stillness of the vast room, with blinds and curtains drawn, a stillness enhanced by the glare of candelabra lighted up, as if in broad day, the heavy, green-repp armchairs, and bookshelves of massive oak ornamented with brass rose-work, passing a litter of cardboard boxes and waste-paper basket, and in the centre the ministerial desk overladen with books and bundles, the councillor makes his way towards a bureau that he has not yet opened.
"Perhaps it may be here," he says, as he turns over a whole file of letters, old and new, receipts, accounts, plans and invoices—one of those mixed files put aside for future classification. Perhaps the paper had been slipped in there by mistake? Monsieur de Pontivy set to work methodically, turning the papers over one by one, stopping here and there to read a word that caught his attention, or threw a sudden light on things long forgotten, and awakened projects long dormant.
"Oh! I must think over that," he exclaimed, as he put one or another aside.
Now and again a ray of joy lit up his countenance, as he thought he had found the missing paper, and as disappointment followed he renewed the search with unabated ardour.
For more than half an hour he went on thus, seeking the lost document, a lawyer's opinion recently received, which would assist him in elucidating a difficult point which was to be secretly debated the next day in Parliament, before judgment was delivered. He had thoughtlessly let his young secretary retire without asking him the whereabouts of this document, which he alone could find.
Monsieur de Pontivy had hastened to his study this evening directly dinner was over, to mature in solitude the arguments which were to triumph on the morrow, and of which he wished to make a short, concise summary before retiring to rest.
Having returned home sooner than usual that afternoon, the fancy had seized him to advance the dinner-hour, but learning that his daughter had not returned, he was obliged to forego his whim. This hour was rarely changed, the regulations of the house being rigorous to a degree, but Monsieur de Pontivy in the excess of his despotic authority was none the less displeased, being early himself, to find no one awaiting him. So when he heard the rumbling of the heavy coach which brought back Clarisse and her governess, Mademoiselle Jusseaume, he sought for a pretext to vent his ill-humour on them.
He had commenced to walk impatiently backwards and forwards the whole length of the room, casting hasty glances out of the window, wondering at the child's delay in coming to him, when the door opened and a head appeared in the doorway, fair, with pale, delicate features, large blue eyes, wide open to the day, in whose clear depths, half-hidden by the fresh candour of first youth, lay a tinge of melancholy.
It was Clarisse.