"Yes," replied Adamas, "the stagings had been taken down, and the masons were at work elsewhere. The escutcheons were made over--But now I think of it, Master Jovelin, this La Flèche must know something of our dear child's story, as they had travelled together?" "I don't think so," said Mario. "We never mentioned it to anyone." "But you and Mercedes talked about it?" wrote Lucilio. "Does La Flèche understand Arabic?" "No, he understands Spanish; but I always talked Arabic with Mercedes." "Were there no other Moors in that band of gypsies?" "There was little Pilar, who understands Arabic because she is the child of a Moor and a _gitana_." "In that case," wrote Lucilio to the marquis, "abandon your belief in the supernatural. La Flèche attempted to make money out of what he had learned. He knew Mario's story down to a certain point; he learned yours in the neighborhood, and the fact of your brother's having disappeared ten years ago. He had stolen the seal. He recognized the coat-of-arms on the door. He remembered the dates. He divined or imagined the whole truth. He hurried to La Motte to make his prediction, which he taught the little _gitana_ by heart. To-night or to-morrow he will bring you the seal, expecting to solve for you the mystery which you have already solved, and to receive a handsome reward. He is a thief and a schemer; nothing more." It cost the marquis a pang to assent to this reasonable and probable explanation. However, he did so. Adamas still held out. "How can you explain what he told me about Bellinde and the rectory?" he asked Lucilio. Lucilio replied that that was very easy. Bellinde had listened at the door of the marquis's apartment the night before; La Flèche had listened in the morning at the door or under the windows of the rectory. "You state the case very sensibly," cried the marquis, "and I see plainly enough that there is no other magic in all this than the magic of Divine Providence, which has brought truth and joy into my house with this child. Let us go to supper! our minds will be clearer afterward." The marquis supped hastily and without enjoyment. He felt that he was being spied upon by Bellinde, who was no longer able to listen in the secret passages; for Adamas, while the masons were on the spot, had had that passage closed; but the prying and malevolent creature had observed the long interviews of the marquis and Jovelin with Mercedes and the child, behind closed doors, and, above all, the self-important and triumphant airs of Adamas, whose every glance seemed to say to her: "You shall know nothing!" She was not intelligent enough to divine anything. She imagined that the marquis, following up the project of marriage, was arranging an entertainment for the young widow, with the assistance of the "Egyptians."