A tender expression stole into their eyes as they turned them towards the Baroness. How could they have suspected that charming woman? How could they have allowed themselves for a moment to doubt that character, so open, so firm, so straightforward? Was she the woman to deceive them, to play them false, or to lower herself? They all three looked at each other stealthily—she, overcome by the revelation she had just made, and they, ashamed of their suspicion, their jealousy, and their anger. At length, M. de Morin thought it time to speak. "You have said," he commenced, with a still rather unsteady voice, "that we must quit you and return to France, leaving you to pursue your journey, run all sorts of danger, and face death itself, perhaps, alone. We will discuss that question when the proper time comes; for the present we can put it aside. First of all allow me to presume on our friendship so far as to ask you for a few details in connection with the circumstance you have just mentioned. M. de Guéran lives, so you say; how do you know that it is so? How far can you put any faith in the reports which are current with regard to his resurrection, hitherto unrevealed?"^ "I have irrefutable proofs," answered Madame de Guéran, "not that M. de Guéran lives, but that he did not die at the time, nor at the place, nor in the manner he was reported to have died. According to these reports, his death took place in October, 1871. Well, he wrote to me in January, 1872! He was said to have been buried in the Bongo country, the goal of my pilgrimage, as I told you some time ago. That country was traversed by him in safety, and long after the day on which he was supposed to have died, he was seen in the territory of the Monbuttoos!" "Who saw him?" asked M. Périères. "A man worthy of all credence, sent to me with his strongest recommendations, a negro of the Dinka tribe and an old soldier taken by Schweinfurth into his service as guide and interpreter." "How was it, then, that Schweinfurth, who was in these countries you mention in 1871, and whom you, as you have told us, went to Germany to see, did not give you any information about M. de Guéran?" "That is easily explained. Schweinfurth, it is true, travelled through these countries in 1871, but he was then on his way back to Khartoum, which he reached on the 21st June. In the beginning of the preceding year, failing to obtain from Munza, King of the Monbuttoos, permission to continue his journey southwards, he left his territory and proceeded northwards, in company with his friend, Aboo-Sammit, the ivory merchant." "Granted," replied M. Périères, "but how does it happen that the servant, to whom you have alluded, is better informed than his master? How did he manage to see amongst the Monbuttoos a European whom Schweinfurth could not possibly meet, because at that time he was in the midst of other tribes?"