"In consequence of a sorrow, of a fright?"

"No, for no direct cause, I am told. The father was a drunkard and the mother committed suicide in a fit of madness."

Lupin reflected and said:

"I should like to see her."

The count gave a rather curious smile:

"You can see her, by all means."

She happened to be in one of the rooms which had been set apart for her.

Lupin was surprised to find an attractive little creature, too thin, too pale, but almost pretty, with her fair hair and her delicate face. Her sea-green eyes had the vague, dreamy look of the eyes of blind people.

He put a few questions to which Isilda gave no answer and others to which she replied with incoherent sentences, as though she understood neither the meaning of the words addressed to her nor those which she herself uttered.

He persisted, taking her very gently by the hand and asking her in an affectionate tone about the time when she still had her reason, about her grandfather, about the memories which might be called up by her life as a child playing freely among the majestic ruins of the castle.

She stood silent, with staring eyes; impassive, any emotion which she might have felt was not enough to rouse her slumbering intelligence.

Lupin asked for a pencil and paper and wrote down the number 813.

The count smiled again.

"Look here, what are you laughing at?" cried Lupin, irritably.

"Nothing ... nothing... . I'm very much interested, that's all.

Isilda looked at the sheet of paper, when he showed it to her, and turned away her head, with a vacant air.

"No bite!" said the count, satirically.

Lupin wrote the letters "APOON."

Isilda paid no more attention than before.

He did not give up the experiment, but kept on writing the same letters, each time watching the girl's face.

She did not stir, but kept her eyes fixed on the paper with an indifference which nothing seemed to disturb. Then, all at once, she seized the pencil, snatched the last sheet out of Lupin's hands and, as though acting under a sudden inspiration, wrote two "L's" in the middle of a space left open by Lupin.

He felt a thrill.

A word had been formed: "APOLLON."

Meanwhile, Isilda clung to both pencil and paper and, with clutching fingers and a strained face, was struggling to make her hand submit to the hesitating orders of her poor little brain.

Lupin waited, feverishly.

She rapidly wrote another word, the word "DIANE."

"Another word! ... Another word!" shouted Lupin.

She twisted her fingers round the pencil, broke the lead, made a big "J"

with the stump and, now utterly exhausted, dropped the pencil.

"Another word! I must have another word!" said Lupin, in a tone of command, catching her by the arm.

But he saw by her eyes, which had once more become indifferent, that that fleeting gleam of intelligence could not shine out again.

"Let us go," he said.

He was walking away, when she ran after him and stood in his path. He stopped:

"What is it?"

She held out the palm of her hand.

"What? Money? ... Is she in the habit of begging?" he asked the count.

"No," said Waldemar, "and I can't understand."

Isilda took two gold coins from her pocket and chinked them together, gleefully.

Lupin looked at them. They were French coins, quite new, bearing the date of that year.

"Where did you get these?" asked Lupin, excitedly.

"French money! ... Who gave it you? ... And when? ... Was it to-day? Speak! ... Answer! ..." He shrugged his shoulders. "Fool that I am! As though she could answer! ... My dear count, would you mind lending me forty marks? ... Thanks ... Here, Isilda, that's for you."

She took the two coins, jingled them with the others in the palm of her hand and then, putting out her arm, pointed to the ruins of the Renascence palace, with a gesture that seemed to call attention more particularly to the left wing and to the top of that wing.

Was it a mechanical movement? Or must it be looked upon as a grateful acknowledgment for the two gold coins?

He glanced at the count. Waldemar was smiling again.

"What makes the brute keep on grinning like that?" said Lupin to himself. "Any one would think that he was having a game with me."

He went to the palace on the off-chance, attended by his escort.

The ground-floor consisted of a number of large reception-rooms, running one into the other and containing the few pieces of furniture that had escaped the fire.

On the first floor, on the north side, was a long gallery, out of which twelve handsome rooms opened all exactly alike.

There was a similar gallery on the second floor, but with twenty-four smaller rooms, also resembling one another. All these apartments were empty, dilapidated, wretched to look at.

Above, there was nothing. The attics had been burnt down.