money. You will dine to-night, sir?” and his tone took a consolatory inflection.
“Certainly I will dine,” said I; and with a last nod of intelligence and commiseration, he withdrew.
And then I leaped, like a wildcat, on the box that contained the Cardinal’s Necklace, intent on stowing it away again in the seclusion of my coat-pocket. But again I stood with it in my hand—struck still with the thought that I could not now return it to Marie Delhasse, that she had vanished leaving it on my hands, and that, in all likelihood, in three or four hours’ time the Duke of Saint-Maclou would be scouring the country and setting every spring in motion in the effort to find the truant lady, and—what I thought he would be at least anxious about—the truant necklace. For to give your family heirlooms away without recompense is a vexatious thing; and ladies who accept them and vanish with them into space can claim but small consideration. And, moreover, if the missing property chance to be found in the possession of a gentleman who is reluctant to explain his presence, who has masqueraded as a groom with intent to deceive the owner of the said property, and has no visible business to bring or keep him on the spot at all—when all this happens, it is apt to look very awkward for that gentleman.
“You will regret it if you don’t start with me;” so said Gustave de Berensac. The present was one of the moments in which I heartily agreed with his prescient prophecy. Human
