President Bonnet had convinced his audience completely, and his closing words cast a chill upon them all.
The Marquise de Langrune deemed it time to create a diversion.
“Who are these people, Lord and Lady Beltham?” she enquired.
“Oh, my dear!” the Baronne de Vibray answered, “it is perfectly obvious that you lead the life of a hermit in this remote country home of yours, and that echoes from the world of Paris do not reach you often! Lord and Lady Beltham are among the best known and most popular people in society. He was formerly attached to the English Embassy, but left Paris to fight in the Transvaal, and his wife went with him and showed magnificent courage and compassion in charge of the ambulance and hospital work. They then went back to London, and a couple of years ago they settled once more in Paris. They lived, and still live, in the boulevard Inkermann at Neuilly-sur-Seine, in a delightful house where they entertain a great deal. I have often been one of Lady Beltham’s guests; she is a most fascinating woman, distinguished, tall, fair, and endowed with the charm that is peculiar to the women of the North. I am very distressed at the trouble that is hanging over her.”
“Well,” said the Marquise de Langrune conclusively, “I mean to believe that the gloomy prognostications of our friend the president will not be justified by the event.”
“Amen!” murmured the Abbé mechanically, roused from his gentle slumber by the closing words of the Marquise.
The clock chimed ten, and her duties as hostess did not make the Marquise forgetful of her duties as grandmother.
“Thérèse,” she called, “it is your bedtime. It is very late, darling.”
The child obediently left her game, said good night to the Baronne de Vibray and President Bonnet, and last of all to the old priest, who gave her a paternal embrace.
“Shall I see you at the seven o’clock mass, Thérèse?” he asked.
The child turned to the Marquise.
“Will you let me accompany Charles to the station tomorrow morning? I will go to the eight o’clock mass on my way back.”
The Marquise looked at Charles Rambert.
“Your father really is coming by the train that reaches Verrières at 6:55?” and when he assented she hesitated a moment before replying to Thérèse. “I think, dear, it would be better to let our young friend go alone to meet his father.”
But Charles Rambert put in his plea.
“Oh, I am sure my father would be delighted to see Thérèse with me when he gets out of the train.”
“Very well, then,” the kind old lady said; “arrange it as you please. But, Thérèse, before you go upstairs, tell our good steward, Dollon, to give orders for the carriage to be ready by six o’clock. It is a long way to the station.”
Thérèse promised, and the two young people left the drawing-room.
“A pretty couple,” remarked the Baronne de Vibray, adding with a characteristic touch of malice, “you mean to make a match between them some day, Marquise?”
The old lady threw up her hands protesting.
“What an idea! Why, Thérèse is not fifteen yet.”
“Who is this Charles Rambert?” the Abbé asked. “I just caught sight of him the day before yesterday with Dollon, and I puzzled my brains wondering who he could be.”
“I am not surprised,” the Marquise laughed, “not surprised that you did not succeed in finding out, for you do not know him. But you may perhaps have heard me mention a M. Etienne Rambert, an old friend of mine, with whom I had many a dance in the long ago. I had lost sight of him completely until about two years ago, when I met him at a charity function in Paris. The poor man has had a rather chequered life; twenty years ago he married a woman who was perfectly charming, but who is, I believe, very ill with a distressing malady: I am not even sure that she is not insane. Quite lately Etienne Rambert has been compelled to send her to an asylum.”
“That does not tell us how his son comes to be your guest,” President Bonnet urged.
“It is very simple: Etienne Rambert is an energetic man who is always moving about. Although he is quite sixty he still occupies himself with some rubber plantations he possesses in Colombia, and he often goes to America: he thinks no more of the voyage than we do of a trip to Paris. Well, just recently young Charles Rambert was leaving the pension in Hamburg where he had been living in order to perfect his German; I knew from his father’s letters that Mme. Rambert was about to be put away, and that Etienne Rambert was obliged to be absent, so I offered to receive Charles here until his father should return to Paris. Charles came the day before yesterday, and that is the whole story.”
“And M. Etienne Rambert joins him here tomorrow?” said the Abbé.
“That is so—”
The Marquise de Langrune would have given other information about her young friend had he not come into the room just then. He was an attractive lad with refined and distinguished features, clear, intelligent eyes, and graceful figure. The other guests were silent, and Charles Rambert approached them with the slight awkwardness of youth. He went up to President Bonnet and plucked up sudden courage.
“And what then, sir?” he asked in a low tone.
“I don’t understand, my boy,” said the magistrate.
“Oh!” said Charles Rambert, “have you finished talking about Fantômas?
