"It is not in good order just at present," he said, breaking the oppressive silence; "the peasant who took charge of it, Jean Merle, disappeared from Engelberg last summer, and has never since been seen or heard of. They say he was paid to take care of this grave; and truly when he was here there was no weed, no soil, no little speck of moss upon it. There was no other grave kept like this. Was Roland Sefton a relation of Madame?"
"Yes," she whispered, or he thought she whispered it from the motion of her lips.
"Madame is not a Catholic?" he asked.
Felicita shook her head.
"What a pity! what a pity!" he continued, in a tone of mild regret, "or I could console her. Yet I will pray for her this night to the good God, and the Mother of Sorrows, to give her comfort. If she only knew the solace of opening her heart; even to a fellow-mortal!"
"Does no one know where Jean Merle is?" she asked, in a low but clear penetrating voice, which startled him, he said afterwards, almost as much as if the image of the blessed Virgin had spoken to him. With the effort to speak, a slight color flushed across the pale wan face, and her eyes fastened eagerly upon him.
"No one, Madame," he replied; "the poor man was a misanthrope, and lived quite alone, in misery. He came neither to confession nor to mass; but whether he was a heretic or an atheist no man knew. Where he came from or where he went to was known only to himself. But they think that he must have perished on the mountains, for he disappeared suddenly last August. His little hut is falling into ruins; it was too poor a place for anybody but him."
"I must go there; where is it?" she inquired, turning abruptly away from the grave, without a tear or a prayer, he observed. The spell that had bound her seemed broken; and she looked agitated and hurried. There was more vigor and decision in her face and manner than he could have believed possible a few moments before. She was no longer a marble image of despair.
"If Madame will go quite through the village," he answered, "it is the last house on the way to Stans. But it cannot be called a house; it is a ruin. It stands apart from all the rest, like an accursed spot; for no person will go near it. If Madame goes, she will find no one there."
With a quick yet stately gesture of farewell, Felicita turned away, and walked swiftly down the little path, not running, but moving so rapidly that she was soon out of sight. By and by, when he had had time to think over the interview and to recover from his surprise, he followed her, but he saw nothing of her; only the miserable hovel where poor Jean Merle had lived, into which she had probably found an entrance.