Madame Fontaine smiled. "You foolish child, do you take me for a tigress?" she said playfully. "I must have another kiss to reconcile me to my new character."
She bent her head to meet the caress—looked by chance at a cupboard fixed in a recess in the opposite wall of the room—and suddenly checked herself. "This is too selfish of me," she said, rising abruptly. "All this time I am forgetting the bridegroom. His father will leave him to hear the good news from you. Do you think I don't know what you are longing to do?" She led Minna hurriedly to the door. "Go, my dear one—go and tell Fritz!"
The instant her daughter disappeared, she rushed across the room to the cupboard. Her eyes had not deceived her. The key was left in the lock.
CHAPTER II
Madame Fontaine dropped into a chair, overwhelmed by the discovery.
She looked at the key left in the cupboard. It was of an old-fashioned pattern—but evidently also of the best workmanship of the time. On its flat handle it bore engraved the words, "Pink-Room Cupboard"—so called from the color of the curtains and hangings in the bedchamber.
"Is my brain softening?" she said to herself. "What a horrible mistake! What a frightful risk to have run!"
She got on her feet again, and opened the cupboard.
The two lower shelves were occupied by her linen, neatly folded and laid out. On the higher shelf, nearly on a level with her eyes, stood a plain wooden box about two feet in height by one foot in breadth. She examined the position of this box with breathless interest and care—then gently lifted it in both hands and placed it on the floor. On a table near the window lay a half-finished watercolor drawing, with a magnifying glass by the side of it. Providing herself with the glass, she returned to the cupboard, and closely investigated the place on which the box had stood. The slight layer of dust—so slight as to be imperceptible to the unassisted eye—which had surrounded the four sides of the box, presented its four delicate edges in perfectly undisturbed straightness of line. This mute evidence conclusively proved that the box had not been moved during her quarter of an hour's absence in Mr. Keller's room. She put it back again, and heaved a deep breath of relief.