In the central hall they were met by Tatiana and Marguerite. Both were very pale and very collected, and their voices were perfectly calm. Piotr, they explained, was asleep, with Garrassime on watch. “The--Laurence”--here Tatiana faltered a little--“has been placed in a _chapelle-ardente_. She--she is very beautiful; the sea has been merciful.” And now her heroes--she dwelt tenderly upon that word--must change into dry clothes and eat something warm and comforting. She glanced anxiously at her husband, then at Régis, and felt, with her marvelous instinct, that there was some new and startling development; but this wise woman asked no questions, and was satisfied to busy herself with what she specified as “first aid to the deserving.” They needed it by this time, of that there could be no doubt, and it was only when completely revived and limbered up by hot bath and cold shower, and steaming coffee with a gracious accompaniment of more substantial viands, followed by a refreshing smoke, that they felt quite equal to assembling the necessarily narrow _conseil-de-famille_ that should decide upon immediate steps. Naturally Marguerite was excluded, for the questions under discussion were not of the sort one can bring to maidenly ears, but the Abbé de Kerdren was called in, and those four--Tatiana, Jean, Régis, and the sailor-priest--sat down before a glorious driftwood-fire in the library to attain some conclusion. Basil was coming back as fast as steam could bring him, his brain afire with wrath and humiliation, determined beyond a doubt to punish the guilty betrayed to him by his faithful and indiscreet agent. The guilty? Tatiana thought of the still, white form in the chapel--that sculptured beauty on the silver brocades of her last couch, between the tall candlesticks burning their pale-yellow flames amid sheaves of snowy flowers. The abbé, Régis, and Jean remembered the quietly delirious man in his strange sick-room at the foot of the cliffs, awaiting unknowingly the verdict of the great physicians telegraphed for to Paris--and there was a silence pregnant with pain and wretchedness. Ah, surely the punishment had already been dealt by stronger hands than Basil’s! Up-stairs little Piotr, ignorant of what new complications Fate was weaving around his baby existence, was playing now with Garrassime--Garrassime moving as in a dream, his honest heart well-nigh broken by so many repeated blows.