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Updated: June 15, 2025
The Comtesse Chantavoine was the one person outwardly unmoved. What she thought, who could tell? Hundreds of eyes scanned her face, yet she seemed unconscious of them, indifferent to them. What would not the Bailly have given for her calmness! What would not the Greffier have given for her importance! She drew every eye by virtue of something which was more than the name of Duchesse de Bercy.
Grandjon-Larisse was turning away when Philip called him back. "Will you carry my profound regret to the Countess Chantavoine?" he whispered. "Say that it lies with her whether Heaven pardon me." Grandjon-Larisse hesitated an instant, then answered: "Those who are in heaven, monseigneur, know best what Heaven may do." Philip's pale face took on a look of agony.
He remembered it had been burned into his brain the day he saw it first in the Gazette de Jersey that he had married the Comtesse Chantavoine, niece of the Marquis Grandjon-Larisse, upon the very day, and but an hour before, the old Duc de Bercy suddenly died. It flashed across his mind now what he had felt then.
You shall meet her to-morrow-to-morrow." "The Comtesse Chantavoine, young, rich, amiable. You shall meet her to-morrow " . . . ! Long after Philip left the Duke to go to his own chamber, these words rang in his ears. He suddenly felt the cords of fate tightening round him.
If at last there crept over Europe wonderful tales of Detricand's past life in Jersey, of the real Duchesse de Bercy, and of the new Prince of Vaufontaine, Detricand did not, or feigned not to, hear them; and the Comtesse Chantavoine had disappeared from public knowledge.
He took a step nearer to the table, and, drawing himself up, looked his princely interlocutor steadily in the eyes. "Of course there is no marriage no woman?" asked the Duke a little hoarsely, his eyes fastened on Philip's. With steady voice Philip replied: "Of course, monsieur le duc." There was another stillness. Some one sighed heavily. It was the Comtesse Chantavoine.
The Governor sat with hands clinched upon his chairarm. The crowd breathed in gasps of excitement. The Comtesse Chantavoine looked at Philip, looked at Guida, and knew that here was the opening of the scroll she had not been able to unfold. Now she should understand that something which had made the old Duc de Bercy with his last breath say, Don't be afraid!
Guida felt her heart sink within her. The Comtesse Chantavoine, who still held her hand, pressed it, though herself cold as ice with sickness of spirit. At that instant, and from Heaven knows where as a bird comes from a bush a little grey man came quickly among them all, carrying spread open before him a book almost as big as himself.
You were never capable of doing me good. It was not in you. From first to last you are untrue. Were it otherwise, were you not from first to last unworthy, would you have but no, your worst crime need not be judged here. Yet had you one spark of worthiness would you have made a mock marriage it is no more with the Comtesse Chantavoine?
Grandjon-Larisse flashed a look of inquiry at him. "It concerns your cousin the Comtesse Chantavoine and Philip d'Avranche, who calls himself her husband and Duc de Bercy." He opened the journal, and handed it to Grandjon-Larisse. "Read," he said. As Grandjon-Larisse read, an oath broke from him. "Is this authentic, monseigneur?" he said in blank astonishment "and the woman still lives?"
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