"We will tell her later."
"What will become of her?"
"She will be my wife, the wife of the real d'Emboise. I desert her to-morrow and return to Algeria. The divorce will be granted in two months' time."
The duke listened, pale and staring, with set jaws. He whispered:
"Are you sure that his accomplices on the yacht will not inform him of your escape?"
"Not before to-morrow."
"So that ...?"
"So that inevitably, at nine o'clock this evening, Arsène Lupin, on his way to the Great Oak, will take the patrol-path that follows the old ramparts and skirts the ruins of the chapel. I shall be there, in the ruins."
"I shall be there too," said the Duc de Sarzeau-Vendôme, quietly, taking down a gun.
It was now five o'clock. The duke talked some time longer to his nephew, examined the weapons, loaded them with fresh cartridges. Then, when night came, he took d'Emboise through the dark passages to his bedroom and hid him in an adjoining closet.