“Why did he not tell me, too?” demanded Lisle, and as he spoke he came back to the chest and sat down, looking eagerly across at Dian, his light brows drawn together in the frown that with him generally meant trouble.
Dian stood up, straightening his great height. Then he walked slowly up and down the room, his hands locked in front of him, thinking deeply. When at last he answered Lisle he spoke slowly. “It is hard to tell you why, and I do not really know myself, except that it was always the Little Mademoiselle whom your grandfather thought the most about, and it was to her that he told the secret of the cellar. It is no longer a secret, and the time has come when it may shelter you all.”
Lisle was standing in front of him, his eyes flashing blue fire.
“He told Marie Josephine, that baby, told her instead of me who am head of my house, now that he has gone. What can you mean, Dian, when you say that grandfather told Marie Josephine?”
Dian was reaching for his cloak which hung on a nail at one side of the secret stairs as he answered quietly:
“The Comte Saint Frère thought that it was for the best. He said that the Little Mademoiselle was the one of you who thought the most, the one who cared for everyone and everything.” Dian turned and faced Lisle as he went on, speaking tenderly. “It was not indeed that you were not his dear beloved grandson. He had many hopes and dreams for you, only the Little Mademoiselle dreamed, too. She was different.”
As he spoke, Dian climbed the first step of the stairs. “I’ll be gone but a short time and we’ll have a good talk about it all when I come back,” he said, and then he climbed up the stairs, opened the secret panel, and, after sliding it back in place, went out through the cellar into the soft spring dusk. He was sad at heart, for he knew that Lisle was wounded in his pride, and that he was angry. It would not make things easier to have him so. He knew that it would be as well to leave him alone for a time, and he felt that it was the hour for him to pay a visit to Vivi and Rosanne. More and more the conviction grew upon him that Rosanne’s situation was now becoming perilous, and that he must soon, at all costs, see that she was safely hidden in the secret cellar, until such time as he could effect an escape for the comtesse.
He had seen Humphrey and had told him of Lisle’s escape and of his being safe in the hidden cellar. He knew that he had done well in telling Humphrey of the cellar, and one of the things he had decided to do next was to show it to him and to tell him of the secret panel and how to open it. Humphrey did not seem to realize his own danger, but Dian felt that it was there. Humphrey was an alien enemy of the Republic. His safety so far had lain largely in the fact of his being so typically a farmer.
Surveillance was growing daily more strict. At any time both Humphrey and Rosanne might be discovered. Dian was thinking of all this as he walked through the crowded, unruly city, amid the sound of hammers on anvils and the rumble of tumbrils carrying poor victims to the guillotine.
As he walked, his cloak thrown across his shoulders, his long even strides taking him over the ground in good time, he was thinking deeply, but he was in no way discouraged. He was right when he said to Lisle that he had deep faith in the safety of them all, but it was something that he could not put into words, something deep within him which spoke to him of good, and which gave him confidence. He turned to it as simply as a child, and it had never failed him. He had thought a great deal about Vivi while he had been in the hidden cellar the last few days. He knew that there was very much that he could do for her, poor little ignorant child, so kind of thought and action, so ready to do as they asked her, keeping their secret for them. There was a life of sunshine for Vivi, away from the dirty alley and the rough madness of Paris, of that Dian was sure, and for that he would work.