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 and the cloth, Heaven knew how long he would stay at the house. That he had any other danger to fear I did not then believe. The mystery had proved the cheapest affair possible; there could be nothing behind it.

It was curious, upon my life, but these words were hardly off my lips when I saw something in the grounds of the Château de l'Épée which altered in a moment my whole opinion of our situation, and set my brain itching with curiosity. My walk had carried me perhaps a mile from the house. Thinking of nothing but Mme. Pauline's prettiness and of her schemes, I looked up presently to find myself in a clearing of a wood, and almost at the door of a little pavilion built in the heart of the thicket. There were no lights in the windows of this strange little house, nor any thing to tell that any one lived in it— but all in a moment, while I was standing in the shadow of the trees, a man crossed the grass before the door, and let himself into the pavilion with a latchkey. For ten seconds at the most I saw him, and though there was nothing but a fitful play of the moonlight between the rolling clouds, I recognized him at once. He was Mme. Pauline's brother—the man who passed in Paris as the Comte de Faugère.

"Come," said I to myself, stepping back into the thicket, "what are you doing here, young man, and why don't you show yourself in the house? She gave it out that you had gone back to your seminary, or whatever you call it. How does it happen that