The Comte de Montreville returned to Paris after an absence of nearly a month. Under any other circumstances, Frédéric would have been surprised at the length of a journey which might have been completed in a fortnight, but in Constance's company he had given little thought to it. When he saw his father again, however, all his memories of Dauphiné rushed back into his mind; he was embarrassed in his presence, longing to question him, but shrinking from it. The count himself did not seem the same as before his departure; he was often pensive and abstracted, as if his thoughts were engrossed by some subject; and when he looked at his son, he, too, seemed to desire and dread an explanation. At last, Frédéric ventured to question him, and, contrary to his expectation, his father replied with no trace of the stern, cold manner which he was wont to assume on approaching that subject. "Have you been in Dauphiné?" said Frédéric; "did you go to Vizille?" "Yes," said the count; "I visited the neighborhood of that village, including the wood where you lived so long." "And did you see that--girl?" "No, I did not see her; she had left her cabin only a few days before, and there was nobody there but an old shepherd." "What! Sister Anne not at her old home? Is it possible? And what of Marguerite?" "The old woman died some months ago." "And Sister Anne has gone away? Poor child! what can have become of her? In her plight, how could she find her way, make herself understood? Ah! unfortunate girl!" "What do you mean?" cried the count, gazing at his son with an expression of the most intense interest; "what is this girl's plight, which makes her such an object of pity? Answer me, Frédéric!" "When she was seven years old, father, Sister Anne lost the power of speech; a shocking calamity and a horrible fright deprived the poor child of the possibility of making herself understood." "Great God!" said the count, thunderstruck by what his son had said; "it is she! I had divined it!" But Frédéric did not hear his father's last words. He was engrossed by the thought of Sister Anne, fancying that he saw her wandering through the woods and fields, helpless and without shelter, turned away from most public-houses, and everywhere exposed to want and misfortune. He reflected that that was all his work, that, if he had not tried to arouse in her heart a violent passion, she would have lived quietly in her solitude, with no thirst for pleasures of which she knew nothing, and with no dreams of happiness and of a different existence. At that moment, Frédéric was overwhelmed by remorse, and he reproached himself bitterly for his conduct to a woman of whom he was no longer enamored, but who was still dear to him. For a long time, the count and his son were buried in thought. The count broke the silence at last, saying in a voice that shook with emotion: "Have no concern as to that young woman's present lot. I have found her."