"Truly, aunt," put in Mademoiselle Plouernel, "I fail to understand the deep anxiety that the loss of a letter, that seems to have been written to my brother in order to inform him of the delay in our arrival in England, can cause you and Monsieur the Abbot. The matter is a trifle; it can have no serious results; cease to fret about it." "There are things, my niece, the wide bearings of which you can not understand," answered the Marchioness of Tremblay sententiously; "it is enough that you know that the loss of this letter is most regrettable." At this moment the Marchioness's lackey entered the room after announcing himself with a rap at the door, and said to his mistress: "Madam, there is a man who asks to see Monsieur the Abbot without delay on an important matter." "Who is he?" "He is a Frenchman, madam." "Does he seem to be noble?" "Yes, madam, he carries a sword." "Marchioness," said the Abbot excitedly as if struck by a sudden thought, "it may be this individual found the letter, and is bringing it back to me. God be praised! our alarm will be at end! Oh, I hope it may be so!" "But how could the stranger know your address?" "Did I not write to Raoul that we were stopping with Monsieur Tilly?" "In that case, Abbot," replied the Marchioness with an accent of extreme apprehension, "the stranger must have read the letter! We would have a stranger informed upon our plans! We must have light upon this, and quickly." And addressing the lackey: "Introduce the stranger immediately, and then withdraw." "The more I think upon it," said Mademoiselle Plouernel to herself, astonished and pensive, "all the more unexplainable does my aunt's and the Abbot's uneasiness seem to me." The personage whom the lackey introduced into the salon was a man of about forty-five years of age; he was simply dressed, without lace or embroidery; for all sign of rank he wore on his shoulders a scarlet knot of the color of the feather in his grey felt hat, and the ribbon of his sword that hung from a leather baldric. The tawny complexion of the stranger, his quick, penetrating eye, black as his moustache, seemed to indicate a southern extraction. Of middle size, robust and sinewy, resolute in his port and endowed with a physiognomy in which intelligence and wit vied with boldness, everything about him revealed a man of energy and decision, but so completely master of himself that nothing, except what he had no interest in concealing, would be allowed to rise to the surface. The new personage presented himself in the salon with complete ease, bowed respectfully to the Marchioness and her niece, and looked from the one to the other in silence with so marked, so fixed a gaze, that the Marchioness of Tremblay felt embarrassed and said to her niece: "Come, Bertha, let us withdraw to my chamber, and leave Monsieur the Abbot with monsieur."