“You are a priest, Monsieur? That is good—that is good! Yes, you can open this casket for me,” and she made as if she held it. “And inside you will find the wedding gift for the young Duc de Trélan—but you must be quick, quick! They will be back from the chapel! . . . Ah, I cannot find the key—I cannot turn the lock! My God, if I should be too late after all! Mon père, mon père, help me! . . . But, mon père, you are doing nothing!”
The Abbé looked round in desperation. He could see nothing that at all resembled a locked casket among the little treasures of the old lady’s room, the pincushions, the images of devotion, all the prim collection of a blameless lifetime. But in a moment the struggle with the imaginary lock came to an end, and as the tired hands relaxed a smile crept about Mlle Magny’s indrawn mouth.
“How handsome he is, Monseigneur Gaston!” she said in a tone of admiration. “My dear lady will be proud of him to-day! They will dance to-night after the wedding, and I shall see it all, as my lady wishes. But none of the fine ladies there will have given the bride such a gift as I shall give the bridegroom, though I am only his dear mother’s maid. . . . But why does the Abbé not bring it to me? When the bride gives round the swordknots and the fans——”
“Madame,” gently interrupted the priest, “if you will tell me where your gift is, I will bring it to you instantly.”
A look of cunning swept over the dying old woman’s face, and a faint sound that was like a chuckle came from her lips.
“Ah, no, I have hidden it well!” she replied unexpectedly, “hidden it nearly as securely as the treasure of Mirabel itself. You will not find it in a hurry, Clotilde!”
Who was Clotilde, wondered the priest? The niece with whom she lived, probably. But what was this about a ‘treasure’ in Mirabel?
“To think,” went on the old voice musingly, “that the precious paper was all these years in Cousin François’ dining-room, and all those scores of years before that, since the time it was stolen. And all the dead and gone Duchesses might have had the rubies to wear. I might have clasped the necklace round my sainted lady’s own neck. Now the new Duchesse will be the first to put it round her pretty throat.”
The priest gave a little shiver. Still that wedding eight-and-twenty years ago! . . . Since then the pretty throat of which she spoke had known a very different necklace . . . but of the same colour . . .
“But if you have hidden the rubies, Madame,” he hazarded, bewildered between the ‘treasure’ and the ‘paper,’ the ‘gift’ and what was concealed, “you will not be able to give them to the bride.”