Norbert breathed freely once more, for he felt his secret was safe.

Diana de Mussidan had now been absent for three months and had not vouchsafed him a single line.  A river of blood flowed between him and his wife.  Among all his acquaintances he had not one friend on whom he could rely, and his reckless life of debauchery and dissipation began to weary him.  His thoughts were always fixed upon this coming child.  How could he ever bear to bring it up as if it were his own?  He had thought over many plans, but always trusted to the first one he had conceived.  This was to procure an infant, it mattered not where or by what means, and substitute it for the new-born child of his wife.  As time rolled on, he became more imbued with this idea, and at length he summoned Jean to him, that faithful old man, who served his master so truly out of affection to the house of Champdoce.

For the first time Jean raised an objection to his master’s proposal, declaring that such an act would bring shame and misery upon all concerned in it; but when he found that Norbert was determined, and that, if he refused, his master would employ some less scrupulous agent, he, with tears in his eyes and a tremor in his voice, promised obedience.

About a month later, Jean came to his master and suggested that it would be best the accouchement of the Duchess should take place at a chateau belonging to the Champdoce family near Montroire, and that this once done, he, Jean would arrange everything.  The removal was effected almost at once, and the Duchess, who was a mere shadow of her former self, made no opposition.  She and Norbert lived together as perfect strangers.  Sometimes a week would elapse without their meeting; and if they had occasion to communicate, it was done by letter.

The estate to which Norbert had conducted the Duchess was admirably adapted for his purpose.  The unhappy woman was entirely alone in the world, and had no one to whom she could apply for protection or advice.  Her father, the Count de Puymandour, had died suddenly a month before, owing to chagrin caused by his defeat when a candidate for a seat in the Chamber.  The brief note from the despairing mother, in which followed the words, “Have mercy!  Give me back my child!” hardly describes the terrible events that occurred in the lonely Chateau to which Norbert had conducted his innocent victim.

The child of the Duchess de Champdoce had been placed by Jean in the Foundling Hospital at Vendome, while the infant that was baptized with the grandiloquent names of Anne Rene, Gontran de Duepair, Marquis de Champdoce, was the bastard child of a girl living near Montroire, who was known in the neighborhood as “The Witch.”

CHAPTER XIX.

Mascarin speaks.

This was the conclusion of the manuscript handed by Mascarin to Paul Violaine, and the young man laid down the roll of paper with the remark, “And that is all.”