"But it is our duty to communicate it to her," said the Count in a peremptory tone. And he drew from his pocket-book a letter stamped with the Red Cross and unfolded it. Dorothy felt her heart flutter with a sudden oppression. She recognized her father's handwriting. The Countess squeezed her hand. She saw that Raoul Davernoie was regarding her with an air of compassion; and with an anxious face, trying less to understand the sentences she heard than to guess the end of this letter, she listened to it.
"My dear Octave,
"I will first of all set your mind at rest about my wound. It is a mere nothing, no complications to be afraid of. At the most a little fever at night, which bothers the major; but all that will pass. We will say no more about it, but come straight to my journey to Bar-le-Duc.
"Octave, I may tell you without any beating about the bush that it has not been useless, and that after a patient search I ended by ferreting out from among a pile of boots and that conglomeration of useless objects which one brings away with one when one bolts, the precious medal. At the end of my convalescence when I come to Paris I will show it to you. But in the meantime, while keeping secret the indications engraved on the face of the medal, I may tell you that on the reverse are engraved these three Latin words: 'In Robore Fortuna.' Three words which may be thus translated: 'Fortune is in the firm heart,' but which, in view of the presence of this word 'Robore' and in spite of the difference in the spelling, doubtless point to the Château de Roborey as the place in which the fortune, of which our family legends tell will consequently be hidden.
"Have we not here, my dear Octave, a step forward on our path towards the truth? We shall do better still. And perhaps we shall be helped in the matter, in the most unexpected fashion, by an extremely nice young person, with whom I have just passed several days which have charmed me—I mean my dear little Yolande.
"You know, my dear friend, that I have very often regretted not having been the father I should like to have been. My love for Yolande's mother, my grief at her death, my life of wandering during the years which followed it, all kept me far away from the modest farm which you call my country seat, and which, I am sure, is no longer anything but a heap of ruins.
"During that time, Yolande was living in the care of the people who farmed my land, bringing herself up, getting her education from the village priest, or the schoolmaster, and above all from Nature, loving the animals, cultivating her flowers, light-hearted and uncommonly thoughtful.
"Several times, during my visits to Argonne, her common sense and intelligence astonished me. On this occasion I found her, in the field-hospital of Bar-le-Duc, in which she has, on her own initiative, established herself as an assistant-nurse, a young girl. Barely fifteen, you cannot imagine the ascendancy she exercises over everyone about her. She decides matters like a grown person and she makes those decisions according to her own judgment. She has an accurate insight into reality, not merely into appearances but into that which lies below appearances.
"'You do see clearly,' I said to her. 'You have the eyes of a cat which moves, quite at its ease, through the darkness.'
"My dear Octave, when the war is finished, I shall bring Yolande to you; and I assure you that, along with our friends, we shall succeed in our enterprise——"