He deposited his own lantern on the floor and took the lamp from her unresisting grasp, looking round the plundered sallette in vain for something to put it on.
“Give me back the lamp, Monsieur le Comte,” said Valentine, finding speech. “We cannot talk here. Let us go to my room. It is safer also.”
“You have a room here?” he exclaimed. “You are . . .” For the first time he seemed to become aware of her attire, so different from anything which he had ever seen her wear.
She held out her hand for the lamp. “Come,” she said, “unless your business here——” She indicated the tool and the map.
“Oh, that can wait now!” said the treasure-hunter with an accent of scorn. He picked up the chisel and the plan and followed her.
So, beneath the cavernous half-seen gilding of the great Salle Verte, down the basement stairs and along the bare prison-like corridor below, carrying the lamp, went the Duchesse de Trélan in her respectable black dress and fichu, and behind her walked, still half stupefied, the man who had once made such persistent and unavailing love to her. And it was in this guise, very exactly that of a thief in the night, that the Comte de Brencourt came for the first time to her house of Mirabel.
The thought penetrated his stupor with some force during the transit. For, once arrived at Valentine’s little parlour, as she put down the lamp on the table he said abruptly:
“I have never been in Mirabel in my life. And I find you here to greet me!” He gave a sudden laugh.
Valentine did not answer. She was much more moved than she wished to betray. She sat down in a chair near the table and motioned to him to do the same. But he put his hands on the table and remained leaning over it, staring at her with a half-wild eagerness.
“Are you alive, Duchesse? Or am I dead, too?”