The whole course of the charming river in this way unrolled itself before their eyes in delightful landscapes through which they wandered, Ralph’s arm round Josephine’s waist ... the Brotonne Forest, the ruins of Jumièges, Saint George’s Abbey, the hills of Bouille, Rouen, Pont-de-l’Arche. They were weeks of intense happiness. During those delightful hours Ralph expended a wealth of gaiety and enthusiasm. The wonderful views, the beautiful Gothic churches, the sunsets and the moonlight, everything served him as pretexts for impassioned declarations of his love. Josine, more silent, smiled as in a happy dream. Every day drew her closer to her lover. If at the beginning she had acted from a mere caprice, she now found herself under the yoke of the law of love which quickened her pulses and taught her the danger and the pain of loving too much. Of the past, of her secret life, never a word. Once however they did exchange a few sentences on this subject. As Ralph was chaffing her about what he called the miracle of her eternal youth, she said: “A miracle? I don’t understand what people mean by a miracle. For example, the other day we drove sixty miles.... You cried out that it was a miracle. But if you’d kept your eyes a little wider open, you would have perceived that that distance was covered not by two horses but by four, for Leonard took the pair which had been drawing it out of the carriage and harnessed another pair in their places in that farm-yard at Doudeville, where a relay was waiting for us.” “You have me there!” exclaimed the young man cheerfully. “Another example,” she went on: “No one in the world knows that your name is Lupin. But I assure you that that very night you rescued me from death, I knew you as Arsène Lupin and nothing else. A miracle? Not a bit of it. You know that everything that concerns Cagliostro interests me extremely; and when fourteen years ago I heard talk of the disappearance of the Queen’s necklace from the house of the Duchess of Dreux-Soubise, I made the most minute enquiry into the circumstances. That brought me first of all to little Ralph d’Andresy and then to the son of Theophrastus Lupin. Later I found traces of your handiwork in several jobs. I knew where I was.” Ralph reflected thoughtfully for a good half-minute; then he said very seriously: “At that date Josine, darling, either you were twelve years old, and it certainly is miraculous that a little girl of that age should have succeeded in an enquiry in which the rest of the world failed, or you were as old as you are to-day, which is even more miraculous, O daughter of Cagliostro!” She frowned. His jesting did not seem at all to her taste. She said even more seriously than he: “We won’t talk about that, Ralph--if you don’t mind.”