“Promise me, Father!” she gasped out as he bent over her.
“I promise you, my daughter, as I hope myself for salvation!”
The drawn lips smiled. “I can say my Nunc Dimittis . . . Bless me, Pierre Chassin!”
He raised his hand. “Benedicat te . . .” and passed straight on to the “Go forth, O Christian soul . . .”
By the end she was unconscious, and a quarter of an hour later, the weeping Clotilde on one side of the bed and the proscribed priest praying on the other, Mlle Magny, her last thoughts on earth occupied with the house of Trélan, went through the great door to meet her sainted lady, leaving on its hither side the secret of Mirabel to bring about results undreamt of.
CHAPTER III
THE GIFT IS RECEIVED
All this while the occupants of M. Charlot’s attic, which the Abbé had so abruptly quitted, were taken up with their own anxieties, and though they had at last fallen silent, the chiaroscuro of their abode was fairly throbbing with uneasiness. What made their leader, with a guide above suspicion, so late in finding his way from Scaër?
At last, just about the moment that M. Chassin, next door, had finished the Proficiscere and was calling for “Clotilde,” the Vicomte de Céligny exclaimed, not for the first time, “This must be they!” The four men strained their ears, for a noise could certainly be heard on the staircase.
“Dame! it sounds as though Le Blé-aux-Champs were drunk!” observed Artamène.