"I cannot--I cannot do him and myself this wrong. It would strike home to us both. Come what may, Arthur, I will stay by you."
"Where is your sister?" asked the Baron, when, an hour later, he entered the lighted drawing-room and found his sons there alone. "Has not Lady Eugénie been told that we are waiting for her?" he continued, turning to the servant who had been preparing the tea-table, and was about to leave the room.
Conrad forestalled the answer.
"Eugénie is not at home." said he, signing to the man to go.
"Not at home!" repeated the Baron, in astonishment. "Has she driven out so late as this? Where can she have gone?"
Conrad shrugged his shoulders.
"I don't know. Directly I came in I ran up to her rooms. She was not there, but I found this lying on the floor."
He drew out a paper, and an odd little twitch played about his lips as, seemingly with the utmost gravity, he pieced the two halves neatly together and laid them before his father. The Baron looked down at them, but could make nothing of it.
"Why, that is the petition drawn out by the proctor, which I gave to Eugénie to sign! I will have the servants up. If she has really gone out, they must know where the carriage was to take her."
He laid his hand on the bell, but Conrad stopped him, and said very quietly: