The evening of the second day after the terrible night of the attack, as Dan was entering the Inn from his work outside, he saw Madame de la Fontaine standing on the gallery under the Red Oak. It was the dusk of a mild pleasant day. She was clad still in her soft grey gown with furs about her waists and neck, and a grey scarf over her head. But there was something infinitely pathetic to him in the listlessness of her attitude, in the expression of a deep and melancholy that had come into her face.
He stole swiftly to her side, and taking her hand in his pressed it to his lips, with a gesture that was as reverent as it was tender. For a moment something of the old brightness returned to her face as she bent her clear gaze upon his bowed head.
"You love me, Dan?" she murmured.
"You know I love you," he whispered passionately.
"Yes, I believe that you do," she said simply. "I shall always be thankful that I have won a good man's love." But suddenly she withdrew her hand, as the door of the bar opened. "See, here is Mademoiselle Nancy. She is coming for me: she is to be with me to-night. There is much for me to do."
His heart surged within him; for he knew that in her simple words there was the tragic note of farewell; but he could not speak, he could not plead from that sad and broken woman for a passion that he knew but too well she could never give. He knew that she would leave him on the morrow, that his protests would be vain;—nay,—he would not even utter them! With the gathering of the darkness about the old Inn, he felt that the light in his heart was being obscured forever.
The evening passed, the night. Morning came, and Madame de la Fontaine, accompanied by Nancy, left the Inn at the Red Oak for Coventry. There remained to Dan of his brief and tragic passion but one letter, which Tom handed to him that morning, and which, with despairing heart, he read and re-read a hundred times.
"Mon cher ami:
"You would forgive that I do not know well how to express myself as I desire, if you could read my heart. I bade you good-bye to-night under the Red Oak, tree for me of such tragic and such beautiful memories. I could not say farewell otherwise, dear friend, nor could you. We have loved sincerely, have we not? We will remember that in days to come; you will remember it even in the happier days to come that I pray God to grant you. I know all that you would say, my friend, but it cannot be. I must vanish from your life, be gone as completely as though I had never entered it. I love you deeply, tenderly, but I could not be to you what I know that now you wish. All the past forbids. The very tragedy that proved to you that I was worthy of your trust forbids. It is my only justification that I saved your lives, dear friend; but oh how bitterly I ask pardon of God for what has been done! Then also, dearest friend, my heart is no longer capable to bear passion, but only to feel great tenderness. I could not say these things, and yet they must be written. I cannot go with them unsaid. Certain other things must be told you in justice to all.
"The story I told you on the schooner that day was largely truth. The General Pointelle, who was at the Inn at the Red Oak in 1814, was in reality the Maréchal de Boisdhyver, the father of your foster-sister Nancy. She is truly Eloise de Boisdhyver. The Maréchal returned to France to support the Emperor, as he wrote to madame your good mother; and he fell, as I told you, on the field of Waterloo. Admitting the importance of his mission, admitting my ambiguous relation to him (indefensible as it was), to have left the child as he did was an act of kindness. In truth the treasure concealed in the Oak Parlour is considerable, and it was always my purpose to return, but the necessary directions for finding it were not entrusted to me, but to the Marquis Marie-Anne, whom I didn't meet until many years after Waterloo. Then I was induced by the Marquis,—your old Marquis—to provide the money for the miserable enterprise, of which we know the tragic result. From the first I was uncertain about the method we adopted; and then soon after our arrival here, from a hundred little indications, I became convinced that Bonhomme was prepared to betray us, once we secured the treasure. As for the Marquis, I suppose that he sailed away on the schooner. You need fear him no longer. It was he, I am convinced, that conveyed to them the information of the loosened casement in the Oak Parlour, and unwittingly arranged for his own undoing and our salvation. At all events he will have realized now that he has hopelessly lost the fight. As for the treasure, by right it belongs to Eloise, who should not disdain to use it. I enclose a transcription of the other half of the torn scrap of paper, which will supplement the directions in your possession.