Madame d’Ionis hesitated.
“Has your memory preserved the idea of this apparition?” said she carelessly, but examining me rather anxiously.
“No,” I replied, “it is very confused now, confused as a dream of which one is still conscious, but no longer cares to remember.”
I lied boldly, Madame d’Ionis was deceived, and I saw that she also was lying, when she pretended having spoken to me in the library only about the effect of the manuscript, in order to blame herself for having lent it to me at a time when I was already greatly agitated. It was evident that through fear caused by my mental condition, she had on that evening said certain things, that she was very glad now I had not understood, but I could not imagine what they might be. She saw I was quite confused, so she believed me cured. I talked very decidedly about my vision as though it were the effect of a high fever. She made me promise to think no more of it, and never to torment myself about it.
“Don’t go and think yourself more weak-minded than other people; there is no one in the world who has not had their hours of delirium. Remain with us two or three days longer, no matter what the doctor says. I do not like to send you back to your parents, so weak and pale. We will say nothing more about the suit, it is useless; I will go and see your father and talk it over with him; without worrying you any more about it.”
By evening I was already cured, and I tried to get into my old room, it was shut up. I risked asking Zéphyrine for the key, who replied that it had been given to Madame d’Ionis. They did not wish to put anyone there, until the recently unearthed legend had again been buried in oblivion.
I pretended that I had forgotten something in the room. They had to yield. Zéphyrine went after the key and entered the room with me. I searched everywhere without saying what I was looking for. I examined the hearth and saw the fresh scratches on the disjointed stones, that Baptiste had left there with his knife. But what did this prove, save that in my madness I had caused a search for an object that existed only in the memory of a dream? I had thought that I had found a ring and had put it on my finger. It was there no longer, without doubt it had never been there!
I did not even dare to question Baptiste on this subject. They did not leave me one moment alone in the ladies’ room, and they shut it up again, as soon as I went out. I felt that there was nothing to keep me at the chateau d’Ionis, and I left by stealth the next morning so as to avoid the drive in a carriage with which they had threatened me.
The horse and the fresh air quite set me up again. I galloped rapidly through the woods that surrounded the chateau, fearing that I might be pursued by the solicitude of my beautiful hostess. I slackened my pace when two leagues distant, and arrived quietly at Angers during the afternoon.
My face was a little changed; my father did not notice it much, but nothing escapes a mother’s eye, and it worried mine. I succeeded in quieting her by eating with an appetite; I had compelled Baptiste to give me his word that he would not say anything; he had made it a condition however that he would not feel bound, should I chance to fall ill again.