The house was turned upside down from top to bottom. Decorators and electricians were in possession. Hammering had been going on all the afternoon. Furniture had been displaced, pushed hither and thither. The hall had been denuded of all but the table; even the privacy of the library had been invaded—and all in preparation for the ball of the day after to-morrow, to which the baron de Naarboveck had invited the highest personages of the aristocratic and official worlds.
What a lively interest Wilhelmine had at first taken in this fête!
The baron was giving it to set a public seal on his diplomatic position, for hitherto he had not been definitely attached to his embassy; now he was to be the accredited ambassador of a certain foreign power. Also he intended to announce the betrothal of the young couple.
Alas! this latter project had suffered shipwreck!
As Wilhelmine sat in lonely state in the library, she saw a dismal future opening before her. Not only had her heart been torn by the brusque rupture with Henri de Loubersac, but everything which made up her home life, such as it was, seemed falling to pieces.... No doubt the diplomat was obliged to be continually absent, but Wilhelmine suffered from this solitude, this abandonment.... She had become attached to the gay and companionable Mademoiselle Berthe, who had been the life and soul of the house. She had disappeared: no tidings of her doings or whereabouts had reached Wilhelmine. There must be some very serious reason for this....
The mysterious occurrences of the past weeks had altered her world, shaken it to its insecure foundations, and inevitably affected her outlook. Life seemed a melancholy thing: how gloomy, how helpless her outlook!
More than ever before she felt in every fibre of her being that she was not the daughter of the baron de Naarboveck, that she was indeed Thérèse Auvernois. But what a fatal destiny must be hers! An existence open to the attacks of misfortune, at the mercy of a being, enigmatic, indefatigable, who, time and again, had thrown his horrible influence across her destiny, was throwing it now—the sinister Fantômas!
Wilhelmine was torn from her miserable reflections by the irruption of a domestic, who announced:
"Monsieur de Loubersac is asking if Mademoiselle can receive him!"
Wilhelmine rose from the divan on which she had been reclining. In an expressionless voice she said: