As the doctor left the room, Norbert threw himself into a chair, and clasped his hands round his head, which throbbed until it seemed as if it would burst. For more than half an hour he sat motionless, and then started to his feet with a stifled cry; for he remembered the bottle into which he had poured the poison, and which had been left on the table. Had any one drunk from it? What had become of it? The agony of his mind gave him the necessary strength to descend to the dining-room; but the bottle was not on the table, nor was it in its customary place in the cupboard. The unhappy boy was looking for it everywhere, when the door silently opened, and Jean appeared on the threshold. The expression upon his young master’s face so startled the faithful old man that he nearly dropped the lighted candle that he carried in his hand. “Why are you here, Master Norbert?” asked he in a voice that trembled with emotion. “I was looking for----I wanted to find----,” faltered Norbert. Jean’s suspicions at once became certainties; he walked up to his young master, and whispered in his ear,-- “You are looking for the Duke’s bottle of wine, are you not? It is quite safe; for I have taken it to my room. To-morrow the contents shall be emptied away, and there will be no proof existing.” Jean spoke in such a low voice that Norbert guessed rather than heard his words, and yet it seemed that the accusing whisper resounded like thunder through the Chateau, filling the old house from cellar to roof-tree. “Be quiet,” said he, laying his hand on the old man’s lips, and gazing around him with wild and affrighted glances. A more complete confession could hardly have been made. “Fear nothing, Master Norbert,” answered Jean; “we are quite alone. I know that there are words which should never be even breathed; and if I have ventured to speak, it was because it was my duty to warn you, and to inculcate on you the necessity of caution.” Norbert was filled with horror when he saw that the old man believed him to be really guilty. “Jean,” cried he, “you are wrong in your suspicions. I tell you that my father never tasted that wine. I snatched the glass from him before his lips had touched it. I flung it out into the courtyard, and, if you search, you will find its scattered fragments there still.” “I am not sitting in judgment upon you; what you tell me to believe I am ready to accept.” “Ah!” cried Norbert passionately, “he does not believe me; he thinks that I am guilty. I swear to you by all that I hold most sacred in this world, that I am innocent of this deed.” The attached servant shook his head with a melancholy air.