“No,” said the other, now in the saddle. “He left the bureau full of banknotes and gold untouched.”
“It was revenge, then,” said the Marquis.
“On an old man? pshaw! No, no, the fellow hadn’t time to take it, that was all,” and the corporal galloped after his comrades, who were almost out of sight by this time.
For a few minutes the General stood, a victim to perplexities which need no explanation; but in a moment he heard the servants returning home, their voices were raised in some sort of dispute at the cross-roads of Montreuil. When they came in, he gave vent to his feelings in an explosion of rage, his wrath fell upon them like a thunderbolt, and all the echoes of the house trembled at the sound of his voice. In the midst of the storm his own man, the boldest and cleverest of the party, brought out an excuse; they had been stopped, he said, by the gendarmerie at the gate of Montreuil, a murder had been committed, and the police were in pursuit. In a moment the General’s anger vanished, he said not another word; then, bethinking himself of his own singular position, drily ordered them all off to bed at once, and left them amazed at his readiness to accept their fellow servant’s lying excuse.
While these incidents took place in the yard, an apparently trifling occurrence had changed the relative positions of three characters in this story. The Marquis had scarcely left the room before his wife looked first towards the key on the mantel-shelf, and then at Hélène; and, after some wavering, bent towards her daughter and said in a low voice, “Hélène your father has left the key on the chimney-piece.”
The girl looked up in surprise and glanced timidly at her mother. The Marquise’s eyes sparkled with curiosity.
“Well, mamma?” she said, and her voice had a troubled ring.
“I should like to know what is going on upstairs. If there is anybody up there, he has not stirred yet. Just go up—”
“I?” cried the girl, with something like horror in her tones.
“Are you afraid?”