The quiet and simple confession touched the magistrate who
listened to it with profound pity. He shaded his eyes with his
hand. The girl's sense of her unworthiness, the love she had given
so unstintingly to Harry Wethermill, the deep pride she had felt
in the delusion that he loved her too, had in it an irony too
bitter. But he was aroused to anger against the man.
"Go on, mademoiselle," he said. But in spite of himself his voice
trembled.
"So I arranged with him that we should meet on Wednesday, as Mr.
Ricardo heard."
"You told him that you would 'want him' on Wednesday," said the
Judge quoting Mr. Ricardo's words.
"Yes," replied Celia. "I meant that the last word of all these
deceptions would have been spoken. I should be free to hear what
he had to say to me. You see, monsieur, I was so sure that I knew
what it was he had to say to me--"and her voice broke upon the
words. She recovered herself with an effort. "Then I went home
with Mme. Dauvray."
On the morning of Tuesday, however, there came a letter from Adele
Tace, of which no trace was afterwards discovered. The letter
invited Mme. Dauvray and Celia to come out to Annecy and dine with
her at an hotel there. They could then return together to Aix. The
proposal fitted well with Mme. Dauvray's inclinations. She was in
a feverish mood of excitement.
"Yes, it will be better that we dine quietly together in a place
where there is no noise and no crowd, and where no one knows us,"
she said; and she looked up the time-table. "There is a train back
which reaches Aix at nine o'clock," she said, "so we need not
spoil Servettaz' holiday."
"His parents will be expecting him," Helene Vauquier added.
Accordingly Servettaz left for Chambery by the 1.50 train from
Aix; and later on in the afternoon Mme. Dauvray and Celia went by
train to Annecy. In the one woman's mind was the queer longing
that "she" should appear and speak to-night; in the girl's there
was a wish passionate as a cry. "This shall be the last time," she
said to herself again and again--"the very last."
Meanwhile, Helene Vauquier, it must be held, burnt carefully Adele
Taces letter. She was left in the Villa Rose with the charwoman to
keep her company. The charwoman bore testimony that Helene
Vauquier certainly did burn a letter in the kitchen-stove, and
that after she had burned it she sat for a long time rocking
herself in a chair, with a smile of great pleasure upon her face,
and now and then moistening her lips with her tongue. But Helene
Vauquier kept her mouth sealed.