The belfry of Cormeilles had recovered its voice; two o’clock rang out on the air.  Antoinette rose and exclaimed:  “I was to meet him at the pretty little gate that you see from here!  He will have the right to be angry if I keep him waiting.”

At once she hastened towards the balustered steps that led from the terrace to the orchard.  M. Langis followed her, seeking to detain her.  “You need not see him again,” said he.  “I will meet him.  Pray, charge me with your explanations.”

She repelled him and replied, in a voice of authority:  “I wish to see him, no one but I can say to him what I have in my heart.  I command you to remain here; I intend that he shall blame no one but me.”  She added with a curl of the lips meant for a smile:  “You must remember, I do not believe yet that I have been deceived; I will not believe it until I have read the lie in his eyes.”

She hastily descended into the orchard, and, during five minutes, her eye fixed on the gate, she waited for Samuel Brohl.  Her impatience counted the seconds, and yet Mlle. Moriaz could have wished the gate would never open.  There was near by an old apple-tree that she loved; in the old days she had more than once suspended her hammock from one of its arched and drooping branches.  She leaned against the gnarled trunk of the old tree.  It seemed to her that she was not alone; some one protected her.

At last the gate opened and admitted Samuel Brohl, who had a smile on his lips.  His first words were:  “And your umbrella!  You have forgotten it?”

She replied:  “Do you not see that there is no sunshine?” And she remained leaning against the apple-tree.

He uplifted his hand to show her the blue sky; he let it fall again.  He looked at Antoinette, and he was afraid.  He guessed immediately that she knew all.  At once he grew audacious.

“I spent a dull day yesterday,” said he.  “Mme. de Lorcy invited me to dine with a crazy woman; but the night made up for it.  I saw Engadine in my dreams—­the firs, the Alpine pines, the emerald lakes, and a red hood.”

“I, too, dreamed last night.  I dreamed that the bracelet you gave me belonged to the crazy woman of whom you speak, and that she had her name engraved on it.”

She threw him the bracelet:  he picked it up, examined it, turned and returned it in his trembling fingers.  She grew impatient.  “Look at the place that has been forced open.  Don’t you know how to read?”

He read, and became stupefied.  Who would have believed that this trinket that he had found among his father’s old traps had come to him from Princess Gulof? that it was the price she had paid for Samuel Brohl’s ignominy and shame?  Samuel was a fatalist; he felt that his star had set, that Fate had conspired to ruin his hopes, that he was found guilty and condemned.  His heart grew heavy within him.

“Can you tell me what I ought to think of a certain Samuel Brohl?” she asked.