They were obliged to confirm this news to her several times at the hotel office. Monsieur le duc had that very morning ordered a coupé to take him to catch a train for Calais. It was true that he had left some baggage behind, but at the same time he notified them that they would perhaps have to forward it to him in England later.
Marianne listened in stupid astonishment. She became livid under her little veil.
"Monsieur de Rosas did not receive a telegram?"
"Yes, madame."
"Ah!"
Something serious had, perhaps, suddenly intervened in the duke's life. Nevertheless, this abrupt departure without notification, following the exciting soirée of the previous day, greatly astonished this woman who but now believed herself securely possessed of José.
"Nonsense!" she thought. "He was afraid of me—Yes, that's it!—Of course, he was afraid of me. He loves me much, too much, and distrusts himself. He has gone away."
She commenced to laugh uneasily as she got into her carriage again.
"Assuredly, that is part of my fate. That stupid Guy leaves for Italy. Rosas leaves for England. Steam was invented to admit of escape from dangerous women. I did not follow Lissac. What if I followed the duke?"
She shrugged her shoulders, and gnawed her cambric handkerchief under her veil, her head resting on the back of the coach, while the driver waited, standing on the sidewalk in front of the hotel, ignorant of the direction in which the young woman wished to go.