Then seeing Louis appear sad and distressed, he quickly added:
“However, it is just as well; it is in the heart that memory dwells, and not in a pile of old stones. I myself had not the courage to return to Provence. I could not trust myself to go to Clameran, where I would have to look into the park of La Verberie. Alas, the only happy moments of my life were spent there!”
Louis’s countenance immediately cleared. The certainty that Gaston had not been to Provence relieved his mind of an immense weight.
The next day Louis telegraphed to Raoul:
“Wisdom and prudence. Follow my directions. All goes well. Be sanguine.”
All was going well; and yet Louis, in spite of his skilfully applied questions, had obtained none of the information which he had come to obtain.
Gaston was communicative on every subject except the one in which Louis was interested. Was this silence premeditated, or simply unconscious? Louis, like all villains, was ever ready to attribute to others the bad motives by which he himself would be influenced.
Anything was better than this uncertainty; he determined to ask his brother plainly what his intentions were in regard to money matters.
He thought the dinner-table a favorable opportunity, and began by saying:
“Do you know, my dear Gaston, that thus far we have discussed every topic except the most important one?”