At Lantriac the night passed in absolute quiet. The Marquis actually rested, and at two o'clock awoke, having shaken off the fever. He felt imbued with a pleasant calm, such as he had not known for a long time, and he attributed this to some sweet dream that he had forgotten, though its impression remained. Unwilling to awaken his hosts, he kept still, gazing at the four walls of the little chamber, brightly lighted by his lamp, and grasping the facts of his position more positively than he had done before since Caroline's departure. He had debated a thousand extreme measures; then he had said to himself that his first duty was to his son; and the sight of this child had given him the force of will he needed to resist the physical disease which now began to threaten him anew. Within twenty-four hours he had fixed upon a definite plan. He would take Didier to Madame Heudebert, leaving with her a letter for Caroline, and then quit France for some time, so that Mlle de Saint-Geneix, reassured by his absence, might return to be near her sister at Étampes. In the course of a few quiet weeks, the Marchioness would perhaps get further information, or perhaps her secret would be discovered by the Duke, who had sworn he would draw it from her by surprise. If the Duke failed, Urbain was not at the end of his resources. He would come back quietly to the castle of Mauveroche, where his mother, was to pass the summer with her daughter-in-law, and he would not let Caroline know of his return until he had cleared her in his mother's estimation, and thus again smoothed away every difficulty.
The most important and the most urgent thing, then, was to draw Mlle de Saint-Geneix from her mysterious hiding-place. The Marquis still thought she was in some Parisian convent. He found himself compelled to stay a few days longer in Polignac to make sure of Dame Roqueberte's complete recovery, before grieving her by taking away his son, and this delay had fretted him more than anything else. To cheat his impatience, he asked himself why he should not write to Madame Heudebert at once and to Caroline also, that they might be prepared to rejoin each other after his departure for a foreign land. By this means he would perhaps gain a few days. He could mail the letter at once, as he would pass through Le Puy on his return to Polignac.
What gave him the idea of writing from Lantriac was, mainly, the sight of the little bureau, where Caroline had left pens, some ink in a cup, and a few stray sheets of paper. These objects, on which his gaze fastened mechanically, seemed inviting him to follow his inspiration. He rose noiselessly, put the lamp on the table, and wrote to Caroline.
"My friend, my sister, you will not desert an unhappy man, who, for a year past, has centred in you the hopes of his life. Caroline, do not mistake my meaning. I have a favor to ask of you which you cannot refuse. I am going away.
"I have a son who has no mother. I love him devotedly; I intrust him to you. Come back!—As for myself, I go to England. You shall never see me again, if you have lost faith in me,—but that is impossible. When have I been unworthy of your esteem? Caroline—"
The Marquis stopped abruptly. An object of little importance had caught his eye. The ordinary paper, the steel pens, had no peculiarities; but one black bead lay on the table between his hand and the inkstand, a trifle insignificant in itself, but one bringing with it a whole world of memories. It was a bit of jet, cut and perforated in a certain unusual fashion. It was part of a valueless bracelet Caroline had worn at Séval; which he easily recognized because she used to take it off whenever she wrote, and he had himself formed a habit of toying with this bracelet while talking to her. He had handled it a hundred times, and one day she had said to him, "Pray don't break it, it is all I have left from my mother's jewel-box." He had looked at it respectfully, and held it lovingly in his hands. Just as she was on the point of quitting her little room in Lantriac, Caroline, in her precipitation, had broken this bracelet; she had picked up the beads hastily, leaving behind but this one.
This black bead reversed all the ideas of the Marquis; but what kind of dreaming was this? These cut jets might be an industrial product of the country he was then in. Nevertheless he sat motionless, absorbed in new surmises. He breathed and questioned the vague perfume of the room. He looked everywhere without moving from his chair. There was nothing on the walls, nothing on the table, nothing on the mantel. Finally he became aware of some bits of paper in the fireplace, which were not completely charred. He bent over the ashes, searched minutely, and found one single fragment of an address, only two syllables of which were legible: one, written by hand, was the last in the word Lantriac, the other, "am," forming part of the postmark. The postmark was that of Étampes, the handwriting that of Madame Heudebert. There could be no longer a doubt: Charlette was no one but Caroline, and perhaps she had never gone away, perhaps she was still in the house.
From that moment, the Marquis had the cunning, the watchfulness, the coolness, and the keen perception of a savage. He discovered the pipe from the little spring leading down to the sink below. The pipe itself was stopped up, but there was more than one fissure in the plaster which surrounded it. He put his ear down to it closely, and caught Peyraque's long, even breathing as he lay yet asleep.
Not a word, though spoken ever so low, could then escape him. In a few moments he distinctly heard Justine rise, uttering the words, "Come, get up, Peyraque; perhaps poor Caroline has not been sleeping so well as we have!"
"A night is a night," said Peyraque; "besides, I can't go for her till after he has gone away."