“I left Clameran because I believed you to be dead.”

After a long silence, Gaston arose, and walked up and down the room as if to shake off a feeling of sadness; then he said, cheerfully: 

“Well, it is of no use to mourn over the past.  All the memories in the world, good or bad, are not worth one slender hope for the future; and thank God, we have a bright future before us.  Let us bury the past, and enjoy life together.”

Louis was silent.  His footing was not sure enough to risk any questions.

“But here I have been talking incessantly for an hour,” said Gaston, “and I dare say that you have not dined.”

“No, I have not, I confess.”

“Why did you not say so before?  I forgot that I had not dined myself.  I will not let you starve, the first day of your arrival.  I will make amends by giving you some splendid old Cape wine.”

He pulled the bell, and ordered the servant to hasten dinner, adding that it must be an excellent one; and within an hour the two brothers were seated at a sumptuous repast.

Gaston kept up an uninterrupted stream of questions.  He wished to know all that had happened during his absence.

“What about Clameran?” he abruptly asked.

Louis hesitated a moment.  Should he tell the truth, or not?

“I have sold Clameran,” he finally said.

“The chateau too?”

“Yes.”

“You acted as you thought best,” said Gaston sadly; “but it seems to me that, if I had been in your place, I should have kept the old homestead.  Our ancestors lived there for many generations, and our father lies buried there.”

Then seeing Louis appear sad and distressed, he quickly added: 

“However, it is just as well; it is in the heart that memory dwells, and not in a pile of old stones.  I myself had not the courage to return to Provence.  I could not trust myself to go to Clameran, where I would have to look into the park of La Verberie.  Alas, the only happy moments of my life were spent there!”

Louis’s countenance immediately cleared.  The certainty that Gaston had not been to Provence relieved his mind of an immense weight.

The next day Louis telegraphed to Raoul: 

“Wisdom and prudence.  Follow my directions.  All goes well.  Be sanguine.”

All was going well; and yet Louis, in spite of his skilfully applied questions, had obtained none of the information which he had come to obtain.

Gaston was communicative on every subject except the one in which Louis was interested.  Was this silence premeditated, or simply unconscious?  Louis, like all villains, was ever ready to attribute to others the bad motives by which he himself would be influenced.

Anything was better than this uncertainty; he determined to ask his brother plainly what his intentions were in regard to money matters.

He thought the dinner-table a favorable opportunity, and began by saying: