It put a vile--ay, the vilest--aspect, on
the work I had to do.
Yet it was very odd! What could M. de Cocheforet mean by
returning so soon, if M. de Cocheforet was here? And, on the
other hand, if it was not his unexpected presence that had so
upset the house, what was the secret? Whom had Clon been
tracking? And what was the cause of Madame's anxiety? In a few
minutes I began to grow curious again; and, as the ladies did not
appear at supper, I had leisure to give my brain full licence,
and, in the course of an hour, thought of a hundred keys to the
mystery. But none exactly fitted the lock, or laid open the
secret.
A false alarm that evening helped to puzzle me still more. I was
sitting about an hour after supper, on the same seat in the
garden--I had my cloak and was smoking--when Madame came out like
a ghost, and, without seeing me, flitted away through the
darkness toward the stables. For a moment I hesitated, and then
I followed her. She went down the path and round the stables,
and, so far, I saw nothing strange in her actions; but when she
had in this way gained the rear of the west wing, she took a
track through the thicket to the east of the house again, and so
came back to the garden.
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