"But," faltered Dick, "is it certain? There may be two of that name at the same convent. The one of whom I speak has left it very recently, with her aunt—"
"It is she!" said the Count, more and more rejoiced at corroborative details. "She ought to be at this moment at Abbeville or Amiens, on the way to Paris to be married. She will pass this house and look up at it, wishing it were hers, as she has so often done, and never dreaming I am here making it ready for her! Yes, there can be no doubt, it is the same Collette,—Mademoiselle de Sarton!"
When Dick was shown to a round chamber in a turret-shaped corner of the château that night, he asked for pen, ink, and paper, saying he always wrote his letters late. By the light of a small candelabra, and after much thought and many beginnings, he composed two documents before he went to bed.
At earliest dawn he dressed and went down-stairs, told the only servant he found up that he was going for a short walk, and left with the servant the two letters, each to be taken to the chamber of its intended recipient. Then Dick hastened to the auberge where his horses and postilion had passed the night.
One letter was to Collette, and read as follows:
"Mademoiselle:
"You are now in your own house, which you have so long wished to possess. Its master, the noblest, kindest, and handsomest gentleman in the world, with boundless will and means to make you happy, is he from whom I, a worthless adventurer with neither possessions nor prospects, would have taken you, in my ignorance and folly. You should thank God for your escape and for giving you a husband such as Monsieur le Comte, whose years have but added to his graces and his merits. I have written him to such effect that he will understand all, and that, when he comes to greet you, nothing will be necessary on your part but for you to give him your hand, and offer your brow for the caress which a princess might be rejoiced and honored to receive."
The other letter was to the Count himself, and, whatever it contained, there is plentiful record, in the family history of the Counts de Rollincourt, to show that it accomplished its purpose. By the time the aunt of Mlle. de Sarton reached the newly bought estate of the Count de Rollincourt, in mad search of her fugitive niece, servants were in waiting at the road to conduct her to the château, where her amazement to find the Count in possession was promptly doubled on seeing Collette installed as mistress,—for, if the Count's little surprise was spoiled, his plan of having the Abbé Foyard perform an impromptu marriage was carried out, after all.
Meanwhile, long before this happy issue of affairs, Dick Wetheral had roused the cowed postilion and set out on horseback towards Paris, leaving the carriage to be taken back when the postilion should return. Dismissing this postilion at the first post, he took new horses, and, riding all day, despite weather and bad roads, he arrived at evening at St. Denis, and dismounted at the principal inn,—tired, hungry, and bespattered with mud. Before going to bed, he sent for a servant to give his clothes a thorough cleaning, that he might in the morning make his triumphal entry into Paris in a state of attire befitting so important an event. When his head rested on the pillow, it was with a pleasant thrill at the realization that his road, roundabout as it had been, had indeed led him to the very portals of Paris, and that it would take him across those portals on the early morrow.
He little knew in what manner he was to cross those portals, how he was to pass through the city yet see it not, and what a vast loop his road was to describe, over strange perils and through wild heart-burnings, ere it should land him in Paris with free feet and open eyes.