“A favour! You have only to ask, Duchesse.” But he bit his lip; for he feared what the request might be.
“There is,” said Valentine, looking down, “a certain family matter on which I should be glad of information. It is possible that M. de Kersaint can supply this. I will, therefore, write him a letter, and ask you to be good enough to convey it to him when you return, Comte. Will you do this for me?”
“Any least service that I can render you, Madame——” said the Comte, but rather formally this time. His brain was still dazed with shock, but it was beginning to wake to other activities, and he suddenly saw with immense distaste a picture of himself delivering a letter from this woman, loved and mourned and now given back to life, into the hand of the man who wore the crest of the house of Trélan, who knew Mirabel so well, who had been so agitated at the mention of her death. . . .
“But do not, Duchesse,” he continued hastily, “do not give me the letter till I have finished or all but finished my quest, for, should I have the mischance to be taken with it on me, you will involve yourself—involve us all,” he added, guessing that any threat of danger to herself alone would probably go unregarded.
Valentine bent her head. “Yes, I understand. And I thank you, Comte. How long will your investigations take you, do you think?”
“It is the getting the gold away that will be the difficulty,” replied the adventurer. “When I have satisfactorily located it I shall concert measures with an agent in Paris. See, Madame, here is a copy of the original plan. But I fear it will not mean much to you, for steps have been taken to render it unintelligible to anybody else.”
He spoke truth, for of the scrawl now under her eyes Valentine could make nothing. Yet she kept her gaze long on it, making up her mind to do a thing she shrank from, with this man of all others, and that was, to bring her husband’s name into the conversation once more. For the Comte had been with this “kinsman”; he might even conceivably have heard something himself.
“Did I understand,” she began, her head still bent over the plan, “that M. de Kersaint communicated with my . . . with the Duc de Trélan before undertaking this search? M. de Céligny said something about such a project.”
“No,” replied M. de Brencourt sharply. “No, there is nothing of M. de Trélan in this. M. de Kersaint soon abandoned that idea. He had to dispense with his kinsman’s authorisation.”
“He could not, perhaps, get into touch with the Duc?” suggested Valentine faintly. Oh, how she hated this! Yet he might hold some clue.