“Nonsense!” retorted Mlle Magny quite sharply. “I am not in . . . in the habit of . . . discussing my past life with strangers!”
“You have been ill, Madame,” said the priest gently. “And has not Mirabel something to do with your present life too?” Then, being a man who knew how to wait, he took his seat beside her again, and exercised this power.
“Have I been wandering?” asked the dying woman, suddenly turning her eyes upon him.
“A little, yes.”
“I have been very ill . . . and they tell me I shall not get better. . . . Is that so, Father?”
“It is what I have been given to understand, my daughter. But you have made your peace with God.”
“Yes,” said she. “But there is something else that I desire to do . . . before I die . . . yet God knows how I am to do it.”
The priest bent forward. “God does indeed know, my daughter, and it was doubtless He Who sent me here to-day. You wish, do you not, to give into the hands of the Duc de Trélan a paper now in your possession concerning a treasure which has been for many years hidden in his château of Mirabel.”
A flush rose in the ivory face. “I talked of that?”
“Of that—and of a wedding at Mirabel.”