"What reservations? I assure you, mademoiselle——"
The young girl broke in firmly:
"You asked me the question, madame, as if you were giving way to a sudden curiosity, which did not rest, so to speak, on any real base. Now you know as well as I do that excavations have been made in the château."
"That's very possible," said Count Octave. "But if they were, it must have been dozens of years ago, in the time of my father or grandfather."
"There are recent excavations," Dorothy asserted.
"But we have only been living in the château a month!"
"It isn't a matter of a month, but of some days ... of some hours...."
The Countess declared with animation:
"I assure you, mademoiselle, that we have not made researches of any kind."
"Then the researches must have been made by some one else."