The paper added:
Later information leads us to believe that the Countess of Cagliostro was an adventuress well known under the name of Pellegrini and sometimes also under the name of Balsamo. Wanted by the police, who had two or three times just missed capturing her in localities in the Caux country, where she had recently been operating, she must have decided to go abroad, and in this way perished with her confederates in the wreck of her yacht, the Glow-worm. We must also mention, with all proper reservations, that there is a rumor to the effect that there is a close connection between certain adventures of the Countess of Cagliostro and the mysterious drama at Mesnil-sous Jumièges. There is a story going about of treasure unearthed and stolen, of plots and documents of great antiquity. But at this point we enter the domain of fable. We will stop therefore and leave it to justice to throw light on the affair.
On the afternoon of the day on which this article appeared, that is to say exactly sixty hours after the drama at Mesnil-sous-Jumièges, Ralph entered the study of the Baron Godfrey at Haie d’Etigues, the study into which he had made his way one night four months before. How many roads had he traversed since that night and how many years older had he grown than the stripling he then was!
At a small table the two cousins were drinking, at a considerable pace, a bottle of brandy.
Without beating about the bush, Ralph said: “I have come to claim the hand of Mademoiselle d’Etigues.”
He was hardly wearing the correct costume in which to ask a lady’s hand in marriage. He was hatless and dressed in an old fisherman’s jersey and trousers much too short for him which revealed his bare feet in grass shoes without any laces.
But Ralph’s costume and his errand were of very little interest to Godfrey d’Etigues. Hollow-eyed, with the face of one of the damned, he held out towards Ralph a bundle of newspapers and groaned:
“Have you seen them? The Countess?”
“Yes, I know all that,” said Ralph.
He detested the man; and he could not refrain from adding: “All the better for you. What? The definite death of Josephine Balsamo must have lifted a heavy burden from your mind.”