They went nearer. There were bead wreaths laid in rows on the tombstone. They counted nineteen, each bearing the date of one of the last nineteen years. Pushing them aside, they read the following inscription in gilt letters worn and soiled by the rain: HERE LIE PATRICE AND CORALIE, BOTH OF WHOM WERE MURDERED ON THE 14th OF APRIL, 1895. REVENGE TO ME: I WILL REPAY. CHAPTER X THE RED CORD Coralie, feeling her legs give way beneath her, had flung herself on the prie-dieu and there knelt praying fervently and wildly. She could not tell on whose behalf, for the repose of what unknown soul her prayers were offered; but her whole being was afire with fever and exaltation and the very action of praying seemed able to assuage her. "What was your mother's name, Coralie?" Patrice whispered. "Louise," she replied. "And my father's name was Armand. It cannot be either of them, therefore; and yet . . ." Patrice also was displaying the greatest agitation. Stooping down, he examined the nineteen wreaths, renewed his inspection of the tombstone and said: "All the same, Coralie, the coincidence is really too extraordinary. My father died in 1895." "And my mother died in that year too," she said, "though I do not know the exact date." "We shall find out, Coralie," he declared. "These things can all be verified. But meanwhile one truth becomes clear. The man who used to interlace the names of Patrice and Coralie was not thinking only of us and was not considering only the future. Perhaps he thought even more of the past, of that Coralie and Patrice whom he knew to have suffered a violent death and whom he had undertaken to avenge. Come away, Coralie. No one must suspect that we have been here." They went down the path and through the two doors on the lane. They were not seen coming in. Patrice at once brought Coralie indoors, urged Ya-Bon and his comrades to increase their vigilance and left the house. He came back in the evening only to go out again early the next day; and it was not until the day after, at three o'clock in the afternoon, that he asked to be shown up to Coralie. "Have you found out?" she asked him at once. "I have found out a great many things which do not dispel the darkness of the present. I am almost tempted to say that they increase it. They do, however, throw a very vivid light on the past." "Do they explain what we saw two days ago?" she asked, anxiously. "Listen to me, Coralie." He sat down opposite her and said: "I shall not tell you all the steps that I have taken. I will merely sum up the result of those which led to some result. I went, first of all, to the Mayor of Passy's office and from there to the Servian Legation." "Then you persist in assuming that it was my mother?" "Yes. I took a copy of her death-certificate, Coralie. Your mother died on the fourteenth of April, 1895." "Oh!" she said. "That is the date on the tomb!" "The very date."