Renée answered by closing her eye-lids gently, and her breathing and the beating of her heart could be heard like the ticking of a watch in the silence of the room at night.
Suddenly a peal of the door-bell rang out, clearly and imperiously, vibrating through the house. It seemed to M. Mauperin as though it had been rung within him, and a shudder passed through him to his very finger-tips like a needle-prick. He went to the door and opened it.
"It is some one who rang by mistake, sir," said the servant-man.
"It's very warm," said M. Mauperin to his daughter as he took his seat again, looking very pale.
Five minutes later the servant knocked. The doctor was waiting in the drawing-room.
"Ah!" said M. Mauperin, getting up once more.
"Go to him," murmured Renée, and then calling him back, she asked, looking alarmed: "Is he going to examine me?"
"I don't know; I don't think so. There'll be no need, perhaps," answered M. Mauperin, playing with the knob of the door.
M. Mauperin had fetched the doctor and left him with his daughter. He was in the drawing-room waiting the result. He had walked up and down, taken a seat, and gazed mechanically at a flower on the carpet, and had then gone to the window and was tapping with his fingers on the pane.