"Advise me, and I will follow it to the letter!"
"Then disguise yourself as a peasant, hide the steel casket in a hamper, and take it to Ludwig Vavel, wherever he may be."
"And Marie?"
"You cannot with safety take her with you. The maid and the casket must not remain together. You must conceal Marie somewhere until you return from the camp."
"Will you not stay here and keep watch over her until I return?"
"I thank you, madame, for your hospitality, but I must not accept it. I come direct from the influenza hospital. I feel that the disease has laid hold of me. I have comfortable quarters at the Nameless Castle, where my old friend Lisette will take care of me. Don't let Marie come to see me; and if I should not recover from this illness, which I feel will be a severe one, let me be buried down yonder on the shore of the lake."
When the Marquis d'Avoncourt left the pavilion he was shaking with a violent chill, and as he took his way with tottering steps toward the Nameless Castle, Katharina, broken-hearted and filled with anguish, wept out her heart in bitter tears.
CHAPTER II
Marie had finished practising her lesson, and hastened to join Katharina in the park. She found her in the pavilion, and was filled with alarm when she saw her "little mama" kneeling among the fragments of her fortune. Katharina's tear-stained eyes, swollen face, and drawn lips betrayed how terribly she was suffering.