“You’re right, sir, you’re right. It’s one one day, and another another. It’s a pity, sir, to waste thought on them—much more, good money. You will dine to-night, sir?” and his tone took a consolatory inflection.
“Certainly I will dine,” said I; and with a last nod of intelligence and commiseration, he withdrew.
And then I leaped, like a wildcat, on the box that contained the Cardinal’s Necklace, intent on stowing it away again in the seclusion of my coat-pocket. But again I stood with it in my hand—struck still with the thought that I could not now return it to Marie Delhasse, that she had vanished leaving it on my hands, and that, in all likelihood, in three or four hours’ time the Duke of Saint-Maclou would be scouring the country and setting every spring in motion in the effort to find the truant lady, and—what I thought he would be at least anxious about—the truant necklace. For to give your family heirlooms away without recompense is a vexatious thing; and ladies who accept them and vanish with them into space can claim but small consideration. And, moreover, if the missing property chance to be found in the possession of a gentleman who is reluctant to explain his presence, who has masqueraded as a groom with intent to deceive the owner of the said property, and has no visible business to bring or keep him on the spot at all—when all this happens, it is apt to look very awkward for that gentleman.
“You will regret it if you don’t start with me;” so said Gustave de Berensac. The present was one of the moments in which I heartily agreed with his prescient prophecy. Human nature is a poor thing. To speak candidly, I cannot recollect that, amid my own selfish perplexities, I spared more than one brief moment to gladness that Marie Delhasse had eluded the pursuit of the Duke of Saint-Maclou. But I spared another to wishing that she had thought of telling me to what haven she was bound.
[Chapter XI.]
A Very Clever Scheme.
I must confess at once that I might easily have displayed more acumen, and that there would have been nothing wonderful in my discerning or guessing the truth about Marie Delhasse’s movements. Yet the truth never occurred to me, never so much as suggested itself in the shape of a possible explanation. I cannot quite tell why; perhaps it conflicted too strongly with the idea of her which possessed me; perhaps it was characteristic of a temperament so different from my own that I could not anticipate it. At any rate, be the reason what it may, I did not seriously doubt that Marie Delhasse had cut the cords which bound her by a hasty flight from Avranches; and my conviction was deepened by my knowledge that an evening train left for Paris just about half an hour after Marie, having played her trick on her mother and on the Duke of Saint-Maclou, had walked out of the hotel, no man and no woman hindering her.
Under these circumstances, my work—imposed and voluntary alike—was done; and the cheering influence of the dinner to which I sat down so awoke my mind to fresh agility that I found the task of disembarrassing myself of that old man of the sea—the Cardinal’s Necklace—no longer so hopeless as it had appeared in the hungry disconsolate hour before my meal. Nay, I saw my way to performing, incidentally, a final service to Marie by creating in the mind of the duke such chagrin and anger as would, I hoped, disincline him from any pursuit of her. If I could, by one stroke, restore him his diamonds and convince him, not of Marie’s virtue, but of her faithlessness, I trusted to be humbly instrumental in freeing her from his importunity, and of restoring the jewels to the duchess—nay, of restoring to her also the undisturbed possession of her home and of the society of her husband. At this latter prospect I told myself that I ought to feel very satisfied, and rather to my surprise found myself feeling not very dissatisfied; for most unquestionably the duchess had treated me villainously and had entirely failed to appreciate me. My face still went hot to think of the glance she had given Marie Delhasse’s maladroit ambassador.