"True; but we must extend the circle of our investigations."

The priest, now, was only striving to gain time, knowing full well that it is the sovereign balm for all sorrows.

His confidence, which had been very great at first, had been sensibly diminished by the responses of an old woman, who pa.s.sed for one of the greatest gossips in the community.

Adroitly interrogated, the worthy dame replied that she knew nothing of such a child, but that there must be one in the neighborhood, since it was the third time she had been questioned on the subject.

Intense as was his surprise, the abbe succeeded in hiding it.

He set the old gossip to talking, and after a two hours' conversation, he arrived at the conclusion that two persons besides Maurice were searching for Marie-Anne's child.

Why, with what aim, and who these persons could be the abbe was unable to ascertain.

"Ah! rascals have their uses after all," he thought. "If we only had a man like Chupin to set upon the track!"

But the old poacher was dead, and his eldest son--the one who knew Blanche de Courtornieu's secret--was in Paris.

Only the widow and the second son remained in Sairmeuse.

They had not, as yet, succeeded in discovering the twenty thousand francs, but the fever for gold was burning in their veins, and they persisted in their search. From morning until night the mother and son toiled on, until the earth around their hut had been explored to the depth of six feet.

A word dropped by a peasant one day put an end to these researches.

"Really, my boy," he said, addressing young Chupin, "I did not suppose you were such a fool as to persist in hunting birds' nests after the birds have flown. Your brother, who is in Paris, can undoubtedly tell you where the treasure was concealed."

The younger Chupin uttered the fierce roar of a wild beast.

"Holy Virgin! you are right!" he exclaimed. "Wait until I get money enough to take me to Paris, and we will see."

CHAPTER L

Martial de Sairmeuse's unexpected visit to the Chateau de Courtornieu had alarmed Aunt Medea even more than Blanche.

In ten seconds, more ideas pa.s.sed through her brain than had visited it for ten years.

She saw the gendarmes at the chateau; she saw her niece arrested, incarcerated in the Montaignac prison, and brought before the Court of a.s.sizes.

If this were all she had to fear! But suppose she, too, were compromised, suspected of complicity, dragged before the judge, and even accused of being the sole culprit!

Finding the suspense intolerable, she left her room; and, stealing on tiptoe to the great drawing-room, she applied her ear to the door of the little blue salon, in which Blanche and Martial were seated.

The conversation which she heard convinced her that her fears were groundless.

She drew a long breath, as if a mighty burden had been lifted from her breast. But a new idea, which was to grow, flourish, and bear fruit, had just taken root in her brain.

When Martial left the room, Aunt Medea at once opened the communicating door and entered the blue salon, thus avowing that she had been a listener.

Twenty-four hours earlier she would not have dreamed of committing such an enormity.

"Well, Blanche, we were frightened at nothing," she exclaimed.

Blanche did not reply.

She was deliberating, forcing herself to weigh the probable consequences of all these events which had succeeded each other with such marvellous rapidity.

"Perhaps the hour of my revenge is almost here," murmured Blanche, as if communing with herself.

"What do you say?" inquired Aunt Medea, with evident curiosity.

"I say, aunt, that in less than a month I shall be Marquise de Sairmeuse in reality as well as in name. My husband will return to me, and then--oh, then!"

"G.o.d grant it!" said Aunt Medea, hypocritically.

In her secret heart she had but little faith in this prediction, and whether it was realized or not mattered little to her.

"Still another proof that your jealousy led you astray; and that--that what you did at the Borderie was unnecessary," she said, in that low tone that accomplices always use in speaking of their crime.

Such had been the opinion of Blanche; but she now shook her head, and gloomily replied:

"You are wrong; that which took place at the Borderie has restored my husband to me. I understand it all, now. It is true that Marie-Anne was not Martial's mistress, but Martial loved her. He loved her, and the rebuffs which he received only increased his pa.s.sion. It was for her sake that he abandoned me; and never, while she lived, would he have thought of me. His emotion on seeing me was the remnant of the emotion which had been awakened by another. His tenderness was only the expression of his sorrow. Whatever happens, I shall have only her leavings--what she has disdained!" the young marquise added, bitterly; and her eyes flashed, and she stamped her foot in ungovernable anger.

"And shall I regret what I have done?" she exclaimed; "never! no, never!"

From that moment, she was herself again, brave and determined.

But horrible fears a.s.sailed her when the inquest began.

Officials came from Montaignac charged with investigating the affair.

They examined a host of witnesses, and there was even talk of sending to Paris for one of those detectives skilled in unravelling all the mysteries of crime.

Aunt Medea was half crazed with terror; and her fear was so apparent that it caused Blanche great anxiety.

"You will end by betraying us," she remarked, one evening.

"Ah! my terror is beyond my control."

"If that is the case, do not leave your room."

"It would be more prudent, certainly."

"You can say that you are not well; your meals shall be served in your own apartment."

Aunt Medea's face brightened. In her inmost heart she was enraptured. To have her meals served in her own room, in her bed in the morning, and on a little table by the fire in the evening, had long been the ambition and the dream of the poor dependent. But how to accomplish it! Two or three times, being a trifle indisposed, she had ventured to ask if her breakfast might be brought to her room, but her request had been harshly refused.

"If Aunt Medea is hungry, she will come down and take her place at the table as usual," had been the response of Mme. Blanche.

To be treated in this way in a chateau where there were a dozen servants standing about idle was hard indeed.