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She had recognized the very sound of the old clock, the Halingre clock, which three months ago, by breaking in a supernatural manner the silence of the deserted chateau, had set both of them on the road of the eight adventures. She counted the strokes. The clock struck eight. "Ah!" she murmured, half swooning and hiding her face in her hands.
He ended by saying: "I always had an instinctive feeling that something had happened, but I never tried to find out.... Now, as a matter of fact, twenty years ago, a relation of mine, a distant cousin, used to live at the Domaine de Halingre. I hoped, because of the name I bear, that this story, which, as I say, I never knew but suspected, would remain hidden for ever."
She was on the point of saying, she was even preparing her words: "You know, our agreement says it must be the Halingre clock. All the other conditions have been fulfilled ... but not this one. So I am free, am I not?
"Yes, we agreed that we should repeat our delightful excursion of yesterday and try to go over that old boarded-up place the look of which made us so curious. It seems to be known as the Domaine de Halingre." She answered a little curtly: "I'm extremely sorry, monsieur, but it would be rather far and I'm feeling a little done up. I shall go for a canter in the park and come indoors again."
But on second thought: "Could you not at least, my dear sir, bring me into touch with some persons in the neighbourhood, some members of your family, who might know more about it?" "Of my family? And why?" "Because the Domaine de Halingre used to belong and no doubt still belongs to the d'Aigleroches. The arms are an eagle on a heap of stones, on a rock. This at once suggested the connection."
"And then, after all," she said to herself, laughing, "he's summoning me to Paris. Now eight o'clock is dangerous to me at a spot three hundred miles from Paris, in that old deserted Chateau de Halingre, but nowhere else. The only clock that can strike the threatening hour is down there, under lock and key, a prisoner!" She reached Paris that evening.
"There is every reason to believe that M. d'Aigleroche was married and that there was another couple living in the neighbourhood with whom the owner of the Domaine de Halingre were on friendly terms. What happened one day, which of these four persons first disturbed the relations between the two households, I am unable to say.
Half an hour later, Hortense Daniel and Renine left the Chateau de Halingre. Before their departure, they had gone as far as the ivy-grown tower, the remains of an old donjon-keep more than half demolished. The inside was empty.
However, she still cast about for weapons, for protection of some sort; and she said to herself that, though he had fulfilled the eight conditions and restored the cornelian clasp to her before the eighth hour had struck, she was nevertheless protected by the fact that this eighth hour was to strike on the clock of the Chateau de Halingre and not elsewhere. It was a formal compact.
"You must excuse me, but I have to go to the station in ten minutes, to meet a friend of my wife's." "Oh, ten minutes will be ample!" "Just the time to smoke a cigarette?" "No longer." He took a cigarette from the case which M. d'Aigleroche handed to him, lit it and said: "I must tell you that our ride happened to take us to an old domain which you are sure to know, the Domaine de Halingre."
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