"Yes, this is where the books come from that she has in her house!" he said to himself, his curiosity becoming greater with every moment. "This library is for her. Ah! here are grammars, abridgments of history, geography, treatises upon botany and the cultivation of flowers; certainly no one would have all these books in his library unless they were used for someone’s instruction. Yes, it must be the person who comes here who has educated Isaure; evidently she has learned here all that she knows more than the other peasants!"
And the young lover heaved a sigh, for he feared that the woman he loved had been taught too much.
He left this room and ascended a staircase leading from the vestibule to the rooms on the first floor. The keys were in all the doors. He entered a bedroom; the tumbled bed indicated that someone had passed the night there. Edouard, more perturbed than ever, looked carefully about; the desk was locked and so was the bureau; but he spied upon a table a pair of small pocket pistols; on examining them he found that they were loaded.
"Pistols!" exclaimed Edouard; "it can’t be a woman who carries such weapons! and yet sometimes, on a journey—but, no! no! it is a man who comes secretly to this house. A man! and Isaure refuses to go away from here! She cannot give me her hand as yet, she says. Can this man be her father? But she told me only this morning that she never knew her parents. No, it is not her father! Who then can this mysterious being be, who exercises such absolute control over her?"
Edouard threw himself upon a chair; his emotion was so intense, his heart beat so violently, that he needed a moment to recover himself. He glanced about the room and sighed as he said to himself:
"Ah! if only I could know all that has happened in this house!"
He replaced the pistols where they were, entered two other rooms, and finding nothing to throw light upon his suspicions, concluded that it was time to leave the deserted house. He closed the doors, descended the stairs, went out through the window on the ground floor, and stood once more in the courtyard adjoining the garden. After one last glance at the house, Edouard returned to the garden and left it by the same method by which he had entered. Looking about him once more, and convinced that no one had seen him, he walked rapidly away from the White House, even more anxious and tormented than he had been before visiting it.
XXIV
THE GHOST.—THE NORTH TOWER
Two days had passed since the visit Edouard had paid to the White House, and despite the suspicions which had arisen in his mind, when he saw Isaure his anxiety always vanished; she displayed so sincere an attachment for him, told him so earnestly how pleased she was that she had won his love, that he often blushed at the thought that he could give way to any feeling of jealousy.
Alfred, however, noticed that Edouard did not seem to be so happy as he should have been; more than once he had asked of his friend the reason of the melancholy and anxiety which he read in his eyes; and he always replied: