Page:Mystery of the Yellow Room (Grosset Dunlap 1908).djvu/202

 I should know all. Who?—Who?—Not knowing who, I must remain silent, out of pity for her. For there is no doubt that she knows how he escaped from The Yellow Room, and yet she keeps the secret. When I know who, I will speak to him—to him!"

"She looked at us now—with a far-away look in her eyes—as if we were not in the chamber. Monsieur Stangerson broke the silence. He declared that, henceforth, he would no more absent himself from his daughter's apartments.  She tried to oppose him in vain.  He adhered firmly to his purpose.  He would install himself there this very night, he said.  Solely concerned for the health of his daughter, he reproached her for having left her bed.  Then he suddenly began talking to her as if she were a little child.  He smiled at her and seemed not to know either what he said or what he did.  The illustrious professor had lost his head.  Mademoiselle Stangerson in a tone of tender distress said: 'Father!—father!' Daddy Jacques blows his nose, and Frédéric Larsan himself is obliged to turn away to hide his emotion.  For myself, I am able neither to think or feel.  I felt an infinite contempt for myself.

"It was the first time that Frédéric Larsan, like myself, found himself face to face with Mademoiselle Stangerson since the attack in The Yellow Room.  Like me, he had insisted on being allowed to question the unhappy lady; but he had not, any more than had I, been permitted.  To him, as to me, the same answer had always been given: Mademoiselle Stangerson was too weak to receive