Le Chapelier put his head in at the door.

“Forgive the intrusion.  But we shall be late, Andre, unless you... "

“Coming,” Andre answered him.  “If you will await my return, Aline, you will oblige me deeply.  Particularly in view of your uncle’s resolve.”

She did not answer him.  She was numbed.  He took her silence for assent, and, bowing, left her.  Standing there she heard his steps going down the stairs together with Le Chapelier’s.  He was speaking to his friend, and his voice was calm and normal.

Oh, he was mad — blinded by self-confidence and vanity.  As his carriage rattled away, she sat down limply, with a sense of exhaustion and nausea.  She was sick and faint with horror.  Andre-Louis was going to his death.  Conviction of it — an unreasoning conviction, the result, perhaps, of all M. de Kercadiou’s rantings — entered her soul.  Awhile she sat thus, paralyzed by hopelessness.  Then she sprang up again, wringing her hands.  She must do something to avert this horror.  But what could she do?  To follow him to the Bois and intervene there would be to make a scandal for no purpose.  The conventions of conduct were all against her, offering a barrier that was not to be overstepped.  Was there no one could help her?

Standing there, half-frenzied by her helplessness, she caught again a sound of vehicles and hooves on the cobbles of the street below.  A carriage was approaching.  It drew up with a clatter before the fencing-academy.  Could it be Andre-Louis returning?  Passionately she snatched at that straw of hope.  Knocking, loud and urgent, fell upon the door.  She heard Andre-Louis’ housekeeper, her wooden shoes clanking upon the stairs, hurrying down to open.

She sped to the door of the anteroom, and pulling it wide stood breathlessly to listen.  But the voice that floated up to her was not the voice she so desperately hoped to hear.  It was a woman’s voice asking in urgent tones for M. Andre-Louis — a voice at first vaguely familiar, then clearly recognized, the voice of Mme. de Plougastel.

Excited, she ran to the head of the narrow staircase in time to hear Mme. de Plougastel exclaim in agitation: 

“He has gone already!  Oh, but how long since?  Which way did he take?”

It was enough to inform Aline that Mme. de Plougastel’s errand must be akin to her own.  At the moment, in the general distress and confusion of her mind, her mental vision focussed entirely on the one vital point, she found in this no matter for astonishment.  The singular regard conceived by Mme. de Plougastel for Andre-Louis seemed to her then a sufficient explanation.

Without pausing to consider, she ran down that steep staircase, calling: 

“Madame!  Madame!”

The portly, comely housekeeper drew aside, and the two ladies faced each other on that threshold.  Mme. de Plougastel looked white and haggard, a nameless dread staring from her eyes.