"Villa des Hortensias,
"Rue Thiers, Pantin, Paris.
"Mademoiselle:—I am dying. I have wronged you deeply, and I dare not die without your forgiveness. Prove to me that you have a great heart by coming to my bedside and telling me that you accept my repentance. The bearer will conduct you.
"Carlotta Deschamps."
"What time did mademoiselle leave?" I inquired.
"Less than a quarter of an hour ago," was the reply.
"Who brought the note to her?"
"A man, monsieur. Mademoiselle accompanied him in a cab."
With a velocity which must have startled the grave and leisurely servant, I precipitated myself out of the house and back into the fiacre, which happily had not gone away. I told the cabman to drive to my hotel at his best speed.
To me Deschamps' letter was in the highest degree suspicious. Rosa, of course, with the simplicity of a heart incapable of any baseness, had accepted it in perfect faith. But I remembered the words of Yvette, uttered in all solemnity: "She is dangerous; you must take care." Further, I observed that the handwriting of this strange and dramatic missive was remarkably firm and regular for a dying woman, and that the composition showed a certain calculated effectiveness. I feared a lure. Instinctively I knew Deschamps to be one of those women who, driven by the goad of passionate feeling, will proceed to any length, content to postpone reflection till afterwards—when the irremediable has happened.
By chance I was slightly acquainted with the remote and sinister suburb where lay the Villa des Hortensias. I knew that at night it possessed a peculiar reputation, and my surmise was that Rosa had been decoyed thither with some evil intent.