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Too proud to complain, and cut off from society by bashfulness, the poor girl who was lying there had evidently gone through all the stages of suffering which the shipwrecked mariner endures, who floats, resting on a stray spar in the great ocean. Papa Ravinet was thinking of all this, when a paper lying on the bureau attracted his eye. He took it up.
It was evident she was looking for one of those almost incredible excuses which are sometimes accepted by credulous old men when violent passions seize them in their dotage. She abandoned the thought, however, when the count stepped forward, and thus allowed Papa Ravinet to be seen behind him. "Malgat!" she cried, "Malgat!"
And, before she had time to consider, Henrietta found herself gently pushed into a small sitting-room, where a middle-aged lady was embroidering at a frame by the light of a large copper lamp. "Dear sister," said Papa Ravinet, still in the door, "here is the young lady of whom I spoke to you, and who does us the honor to accept our hospitality."
Then, placing the guide on the tablecloth between them, they looked for the page containing the railway from Paris to Lyons and Marseilles, then the train which Papa Ravinet was to have taken; and they delighted in counting up how swiftly the "express" went, and all the stations where it stopped.
But at that very hour the tenant of the fourth story, Papa Ravinet, the second-hand dealer, was going to his dinner. If he had gone down as usually, by the front staircase, no noise would have reached him. But Providence was awake. That evening he went down the back stairs, and heard the death-rattle of the poor dying girl.
Papa Ravinet seemed to have grown a foot; his hatred convulsed his placid face; his voice trembled with rage; and his yellow eyes shone with ill-subdued passion. Daniel wondered, and asked himself what the people who had sworn to ruin him and Henrietta could have done to this man, who looked so inoffensive with his bright-flowered waistcoat and his coat with the high collar.
But, whilst the man was knocking at the door, M. Ravinet had knelt down, and tried to open the door a little, putting now his eye, and now his ear, to the keyhole and to the slight opening between the door and the frame. Suddenly he rose deadly pale. "It is all over; we are too late!" And, as the neighbors expressed some doubts, he cried furiously, "Have you no noses?
Marseilles, 12.40 a.m. "Saint Louis" signalled by telegraph this morning. Will be in to-night. I hire boat to go and meet her, provided Champcey is on board. This evening telegram. Ravinet. "But this does not tell us any thing," said Henrietta, terribly disappointed. "Just see, madam, your brother is not even sure whether M. Champcey is on board 'The Saint Louis." Perhaps Mrs.
Although wholly inexperienced, she still had been struck by certain astounding changes in Papa Ravinet. Thus, whenever he became animated, his carriage, his gestures, and his manners, contrasted with his country-fashioned costume, as if he had for the moment forgotten his lesson.
Lightly and promptly, like a sheriff's clerk, Papa Ravinet jumped out; and, having aided Henrietta to alight, he offered her his arm, and drew her into the house, saying, "You will see what a surprise I have in store for you." In the third story the old man stopped; and, drawing a key from his pocket, he opened the door which faced the staircase.
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