“The same night—as soon as you come home, no matter how late it is?” she called across the room excitedly.
Lisle nodded. It was a long room and she looked such a little figure sitting there on the broad window sill. He was right. She was like their grandfather.
She listened until his footsteps had died away. Proté was in the housekeeper’s room having a good gossip. She and Flambeau were alone.
She settled back in the corner of the window sill, Flambeau at her feet. She liked being there alone, and she felt sleepy and comfortable. She was thinking of her grandfather and of the spring afternoon two years before when they had had the adventure. She had often sat with him while he read or wrote and on that particular day she had found him looking at her in his sad, wistful way. The others had gone for a drive with Madame le Pont. The servants, except for the footmen on duty in the lower hall, were in their own part of the house, so they were quite alone. She had been sitting in the chair with the fawn and tiger coat of arms of the Saint Frères emblazoned in gold at the top of it.
“You have l’esprit, little Marie,” he had said. “You are the one who will think and understand and you are the one of this generation who will know how to help. I have a secret to tell you and something to show you. Promise me first that you will keep this afternoon locked up in your heart. Do not breathe of it to any soul unless the time should come when by so doing you feel that you will be of service to those you hold dear. Do you understand?” Grandfather had risen and come over to her as he spoke. “Do you understand, my child, that, after I am gone, except for one other, you are the only one who will know of what I am to show you and tell you?”
“Who is the other one, grandfather?” she had asked, all afire with eager interest.
Grandfather had shaken his head. “Do not concern yourself with that, little one. Be grateful that from them all I have chosen you. I am taking you down into the heart of the earth, Marie. I am going to tell you the legend of your house.”
Flambeau barked suddenly and fiercely, his feet on the window seat, his eager eyes intent on something which had caught his interest in the garden below. His bark brought Marie Josephine back to the present with a start. She jumped to her feet.
“Come, Flambeau, we’ll go down to the cellar,” she said. She ran across the room and the dog followed her with graceful bounds. When they reached the staircase, Marie Josephine leaned over the banister and listened, and Flambeau stopped and listened too. At the top of the first flight of stairs they both stopped and listened again. There was not a sound in the great house.
The next staircase was steep and they had to be cautious. Marie Josephine felt along the side of the rough stone wall as they walked, and she placed one foot before the other very carefully on the uneven hollows of the stone steps. It was a long way down to the cellars. They stopped to rest several times and welcomed the flare of a taper set in the wall at the bottom of the stairs. A damp, musty odor greeted them and a gusty wind blew about them.