Approaching the house from the back through the orchard and the kitchen gardens, he could not notice the agitation which reigned in front.  He never met a single soul.  Only upstairs, while walking softly along the corridor, he became aware that the house was awake and much more noisy than usual.  Names of servants were being called out down below in a confused noise of coming and going.  He noticed with some concern that the door of his own room stood ajar, though the shutters had not been opened yet.  He had hoped that his early excursion would have passed unperceived.  He expected to find some servant just gone in; but the sunshine filtering through the usual cracks enabled him to see lying on the low divan something bulky which had the appearance of two women clasped in each other’s arms.  Tearful and consolatory murmurs issued mysteriously from that appearance.  General D’Hubert pulled open the nearest pair of shutters violently.  One of the women then jumped up.  It was his sister.  She stood for a moment with her hair hanging down and her arms raised straight up above her head, and then flung herself with a stifled cry into his arms.  He returned her embrace, trying at the same time to disengage himself from it.  The other woman had not risen.  She seemed, on the contrary, to cling closer to the divan, hiding her face in the cushions.  Her hair was also loose; it was admirably fair.  General D’Hubert recognised it with staggering emotion.  Mlle. de Valmassigue!  Adele!  In distress!

He became greatly alarmed and got rid of his sister’s hug definitely.  Madame Leonie then extended her shapely bare arm out of her peignoir, pointing dramatically at the divan: 

“This poor terrified child has rushed here two miles from home on foot—­running all the way.”

“What on earth has happened?” asked General D’Hubert in a low, agitated voice.  But Madame Leonie was speaking loudly.

“She rang the great bell at the gate and roused all the household—­we were all asleep yet.  You may imagine what a terrible shock....  Adele, my dear child, sit up.”

General D’Hubert’s expression was not that of a man who imagines with facility.  He did, however, fish out of chaos the notion that his prospective mother-in-law had died suddenly, but only to dismiss it at once.  He could not conceive the nature of the event, of the catastrophe which could induce Mlle, de Valmassigue living in a house full of servants, to bring the news over the fields herself, two miles, running all the way.

“But why are you in this room?” he whispered, full of awe.

“Of course I ran up to see and this child...  I did not notice it—­she followed me.  It’s that absurd Chevalier,” went on Madame Leonie, looking towards the divan....  “Her hair’s come down.  You may imagine she did not stop to call her maid to dress it before she started....  Adele, my dear, sit up....  He blurted it all out to her at half-past four in the morning.