"It was very simple," she said. "My husband, who is not quite sane, as I have told you, is being looked after at Ville d'Avray; and I sometimes go to see him, without telling anybody, I admit. That was how I came to speak to that poor madwoman and how, the other day, she made signs that she wanted me to visit her. We were alone. I went into the cottage. She threw herself upon me and overpowered me before I had time to cry for help. I thought it was a jest; and so it was, wasn't it: a madwoman's jest? She was quite gentle with me.... All the same, she let me starve. But I was so sure of you!"
"And weren't you frightened?"
"Of starving? No. Besides, she gave me some food, now and then, when the fancy took her.... And then I was sure of you!"
"Yes, but there was something else: that other peril...."
"What other peril?" she asked, ingenuously.
Rénine gave a start. He suddenly understood--it seemed strange at first, though it was quite natural--that Hortense had not for a moment suspected and did not yet suspect the terrible danger which she had run. Her mind had not connected with her own adventure the murders committed by the lady with the hatchet.
He thought that it would always be time enough to tell her the truth. For that matter, a few days later her husband, who had been locked up for years, died in the asylum at Ville d'Avray, and Hortense, who had been recommended by her doctor a short period of rest and solitude, went to stay with a relation living near the village of Bassicourt, in the centre of France.
[VII]
FOOTPRINTS IN THE SNOW
To Prince Serge Rénine,
Boulevard Haussmann,
Paris