Unable to speak, she took his hand, her eyes
filling with tears.
"I am innocent," she said, ending her dream.
"You will not go out to-day, will you?" asked Jules.
"No, I feel too weak to leave my bed."
"If you should change your mind, wait till I return," said Jules.
Then he went down to the porter's lodge.
"Fouguereau, you will watch the door yourself to-day. I wish to know
exactly who comes to the house, and who leaves it."
Then he threw himself into a hackney-coach, and was driven to the
hotel de Maulincour, where he asked for the baron.
"Monsieur is ill," they told him.
Jules insisted on entering, and gave his name. If he could not see the
baron, he wished to see the vidame or the dowager. He waited some time
in the salon, where Madame de Maulincour finally came to him and told
him that her grandson was much too ill to receive him.
"I know, madame, the nature of his illness from the letter you did me
the honor to write, and I beg you to believe--"
"A letter to you, monsieur, written by me!" cried the dowager,
interrupting him. "I have written you no letter. What was I made to
say in that letter, monsieur?"
"Madame," replied Jules, "intending to see Monsieur de Maulincour
to-day, I thought it best to preserve the letter in spite of its
injunction to destroy it. There it is."
Madame de Maulincour put on her spectacles, and the moment she cast
her eyes on the paper she showed the utmost surprise.
"Monsieur," she said, "my writing is so perfectly imitated that, if
the matter were not so recent, I might be deceived myself.
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