"Now, Poulain, do tell your wife that there is really nothing to worry about. The police speak of you both in the very highest terms! As to the search that will take place to-morrow, it is the merest formality."
"I hope, monsieur, that you will do us the honour of being present," said Madame Poulain quickly. "We have nothing to hide, and we should far prefer you to be there."
"If such is your wish I will certainly be present," said Senator Burton gravely.
And then, as he walked away to the escalier d'honneur, he told himself that on the whole the poor Poulains had taken his disagreeable piece of news very well. Gerald was not showing his usual sense over this business: he had let his sympathies run away with him. But the Senator loved his son all the better for his chivalrous interest in poor Mrs. Dampier. It wasn't every young man who would have put everything aside in the way of interest, of amusement, and of pleasure in such a city as Paris, for the sake of an entire stranger.
As to Gerald's view of the Poulains, that again was natural. He didn't know these people with the same kindly knowledge the Senator and Daisy had of them. Gerald had been at college, and later working hard in the office of America's greatest living architect, at the time the Senator and his daughter had spent a whole winter at the Hôtel Saint Ange.
It was natural that the young man should take Mrs. Dampier's word instead of the hotel-keepers'. But even so, how extraordinary was the utter divergence between the two accounts of what had happened!
For the hundredth time Senator Burton asked himself where the truth lay.
A sad change had come over Nancy Dampier in the three long days. She could not sleep, and they had to force her to eat. The interrogatories to which she had had to submit, first from one and then from another, had worn her out. When going over her story with the Consular official, she had suddenly faltered, and putting her hand to her head with a bewildered gesture, "I can't remember," she had said, looking round piteously at the Senator, "I can't remember!"
And he asked himself now whether those three words did not embody more of the truth than the poor girl would admit. Had she ever really remembered what had happened on that first evening of her arrival in Paris?
Such were Senator Burton's disconnected and troubled thoughts as, leaving the perturbed hotel-keepers, he slowly went to join his children and their guest.