The shock which RenÉe had had on leaving her brother's room, and which had made her totter for a moment, had brought on palpitation of the heart, and for a week afterward she had not been well. She had been kept quiet and had taken medicines, but she did not recover her gaiety, and time did not appear to bring it back to her. On seeing her ill, Henri knew very well what was the matter, and he had done all in his power to make things up with her again. He had been most affectionate, attentive, and considerate, and had endeavoured to show his repentance. He had tried to get into her good graces once more, to appease her conscience, and to calm her indignation; but his efforts were all in vain. He was always conscious of a certain coolness in her manner, of a repugnance for him, and of a sort of quiet resolution which caused him a vague dread. He understood perfectly well that she had only forgotten the insult of his brutality; she had forgiven her brother, but she had not forgiven him as a man.

Her mother had arranged to take her to Paris one day for a little change, and at the last moment had not felt well enough to go. Henri had some business to do, and he offered to accompany his sister. They started, and on reaching Paris drove to the Rue Richelieu. As they were passing the library Henri told the cabman to draw up.

"Will you wait here for me a moment?" he said to his sister, "I want to ask one of the librarians a question. Why not come in with me, though," he added as an after-thought. "You have always wanted to see the manuscript scroll-work and that is in the same room. You would find it interesting, and I could get my information at the same time."

RenÉe went up with her brother to the manuscript-room, and Henri took her to the end of a table, waited until the prayer-book he had asked for was brought, and then went to speak to a librarian in one of the window recesses.

RenÉe turned over the leaves of her book slowly. Just behind her one of the employees was warming himself at the hot-air grating. Presently he was joined by another, who had just taken some volumes and some title-deeds to the desk near which Henri was talking, and RenÉe heard the following conversation just behind her:

"I say, Chamerot, you see that little chap?"

"Yes, at M. Reisard's desk."

"Well, he can flatter himself that he's got hold of some information which isn't quite correct. He's come to ask whether there used to be a family named Villacourt, and whether the name has died out. They've told him that it has. Now if he'd asked me, I could have told him that some folks of that name must be living. I don't know whether it's the same family; but there was one of them there before I left that part of the world, and a strong, healthy fellow too—the eldest, M. Boisjorand—the proof is that we had a fight once, and that he knew how to give hard blows. Their place was quite near to where we lived. One of the turrets of their house could be seen above Saint-Mihiel, and from a good distance too; but it didn't belong to them in my time. They were a spendthrift lot, that family. Oh, they were queer ones for nobility; they lived with the charcoal-burners in the Croix-du-Soldat woods, at Motte-Noire, like regular satyrs."

Saint-Mihiel, the Croix-du-Soldat woods, and Motte-Noire—all these names fixed themselves on RenÉe's memory and haunted her.

"There, now I have what I wanted," said Henri, gaily, when he came back to her to take her away.