The marquis relapsed into meditation.
How did Lauriane obtain Villareal's dagger? She must have received it from him, since she had disposed of it as her own property.
In vain did he search the genealogical tree of the De Beuvres, he found there no name to which the initials S. A. could refer.
"Can it be," he said to himself, "that she made the same agreement with him that she afterward made with me?"
He consoled himself, however, by the thought that she apparently cared but little for the former compact, since she had sacrificed it to him; but there was none the less something incomprehensible in the episode, and the honest marquis was not yet foolish enough not to fear that he was the victim of some practical joke.
And then, what the child had said complicated the confusion in his mind, and he could not imagine what intrigue of destiny or mystification encompassed that dagger.
He was inclined to go to have an explanation at once with his guest; but he remembered that Lauriane had urged him to conceal her pledge and to let no one see it.
Adamas saw the anxiety on his master's brow and was touched by it.
"What is it, monsieur," he said, "what can your poor old Adamas do to relieve your perplexity?"
"I do not know, my friend. I would like to be able to divine how it happens that the Moor has a weapon like this, bearing the same device and the same initials."