At this thought he trembled once more. In a sudden hallucination he saw the little parlor of the Villa Helmholtz—the Archduke had thus named his house after the great savant who had been his master. The lover saw the Baroness Ely sitting by the fire in a dress of black lace with bows of myrtle green, the one of her dresses which he most admired. He saw himself entering this parlor in the afternoon; he saw the furniture, the flowers in their vases, the lamps with their tinted shades, all these well-loved surroundings, and a different welcome—a look in which he would perceive, not by a wild hypothesis this time, but with certitude, that Madame de Carlsberg knew what he had done. The pain which the mere thought of this caused him brought him back to reality.
"I am dreaming again," he said to himself, "but it is none the less certain that I have been very imprudent—even worse, indelicate. I had no right to buy that box. No, I had no right. I risked, in the first place, the chance of being seen, and of compromising her. And then, even as it is, if some indiscreet remark is made, and if the Prince makes an investigation?"
In another hallucination he saw the Archduke Henry Francis and the Baroness face to face. He saw the beautiful, the divine eyes of the woman he loved fill with tears. She would suffer in her private life once more, and from his fault, on account of him who would have given all his blood with delight in order that mouth so wilfully sad might smile with happiness. Thus the most imaginary, but also the most painful of anxieties commenced to torture the young man, while Miss Marsh and Corancez in a corner of the compartment exchanged in a low voice these comments:—
"I shall ask my uncle to invite him, that's settled," said the young American girl. "Poor boy, I have a real sympathy for him. He looks so melancholy. They have pained him by talking so of the Baroness."
"No, no," said Corancez. "He is in despair at having missed, by his own fault, a chance of speaking with his idol this evening. Imagine, at the moment when I went up to her—piff—my Hautefeuille disappeared. He is remorseful at having been too timid. That is a sentiment which I hope never to feel."
Remorse. The astute Southerner did not realize how truly he had spoken. He was mistaken in regard to the motive, but he had given the most precise and fitting term to the emotion which kept Hautefeuille awake through the long hours of the night, and which this morning held him motionless before the precious case. It was as though he had not bought it, but had stolen it, so much did he suffer to have it there before his eyes. What was he to do now? Keep it? That had been his instinctive, his passionate desire when he hurried to the merchant. This simple object would make the Baroness Ely so real, so present to him. Keep it? The words he had heard the night before came back to him, and with them all his apprehension. Send it back to her? What could be more certain to make the young woman seek out who it was who had taken such a liberty, and if she did find out?
A prey to these tumultuous thoughts, Pierre turned the golden box in his hands. He spelled out the absurd inscription written in precious stones on the cover of the case: "M.E. moi. 100 C.C.—Aimez-moi sans cesser," the characters said; and the lover thought that this present, bearing such a tender request, must have been given to Madame de Carlsberg by the Archduke or some very dear friend.
What agony he would have felt had the feminine trinket been able to relate its history and all the quarrels that its sentimental device had caused during the liaison of the Baroness Ely with Olivier du Prat. How often Du Prat, too, had tried to discover from whom his mistress had received this present—one of those articles whose unnecessary gaudiness savors of adultery. And he could never draw from the young woman the name of the mysterious person who had given it, of whom Ely had said to Madame Brion, "It was some one who is no longer in this world."
In truth, this suspicious case was not a souvenir of anything very culpable; the Baroness had received it from one of the Counts Kornow. She had had with him one of her earliest flirtations, pushed far enough—as the inscription testified—but interrupted before its consummation by the departure of the young Count for the war in Turkey. He had been killed at Plevna.
Yes, how miserable Hautefeuille would have been if he could have divined the words that had been uttered over this case—words of romantic tenderness from the young Russian, words of outrageous suspicion from his dearest friend, that Olivier whose portrait—what irony!—was on the table before him at this moment. That heart so young, still so intact, so pure, so confiding, was destined to bleed for that which he did not suspect on this morning when, in all his delicacy, he accused no one but himself.