“Yes; they are all in one of my trunks.”
Papa Ravinet was evidently much embarrassed; but at last he said,—
“Ah! if I might dare? But no; it would be asking too much, perhaps, to beg you to let me see them?”
He did not know how ready Daniel was to grant the request. Ready as he was, to tell Henrietta everything, he could not but wish that she should read these letters, as she would see from them, that, if the countess had written to him, he had never returned an answer.
“You can never ask too much, M. Ravinet,” he replied. “Lefloch, my servant, must have come up by this time with the trunks; and, if you give me time to go down to my room, you shall have the letters at once.”
He was on the point of leaving the room, when the old dealer held him back, and said,—
“Sir, you forget the man who has been following you all the way from Marseilles. Wait till my sister has made sure that there is nobody watching you.”
Mrs. Bertolle at once went out; but she noticed nothing suspicious, and found all the passages silent and deserted. The spy had probably gone to make his report to his employers. Daniel went down promptly; and, when he came back, he held in his hand a bundle of faded and crumpled papers, which he handed to Papa Ravinet, with the words,—
“Here they are!”
Strange as it may seem, when the old gentleman touched these letters, impregnated with the peculiar perfume affected by Sarah Brandon, he trembled and turned pale. Immediately, however, perhaps in order to conceal his embarrassment, or to be the better able to reflect, he took a candlestick from the mantlepiece, and sat down aside, at one of the small tables. Mrs. Bertolle, Daniel, and Henrietta were silent; and nothing broke the stillness but the rustling of the paper, and the old gentleman’s voice as he muttered,—