Marie-Anne was no longer at Sairmeuse—she had been driven away.
Where was she now? She, accustomed to all the luxury that wealth could procure, no longer had any home except a poor thatch-covered hovel, whose walls were not even whitewashed, whose only floor was the earth itself, dusty as the public highway in summer, frozen or muddy in winter.
She was reduced to the necessity of occupying herself the humble abode she, in her charitable heart, had intended as an asylum for one of her pensioners.
What was she doing now? Doubtless she was weeping.
At this thought poor Maurice was heartbroken.
What was his surprise, a little after midnight, to see the chateau brilliantly illuminated.
The duke and his son had repaired to the chateau after the banquet given by the Marquis de Courtornieu was over; and, before going to bed, they made a tour of inspection through this magnificent abode in which their ancestors had lived. They, therefore, might be said to have taken possession of the mansion whose threshold M. de Sairmeuse had not crossed for twenty-two years, and which Martial had never seen.
Maurice saw the lights leap from story to story, from casement to casement, until at last even the windows of Marie-Anne’s room were illuminated.
At this sight the unhappy youth could not restrain a cry of rage.
These men, these strangers, dared enter this virgin bower, which he, even in thought, scarcely dared to penetrate.