“You have twenty-four hours, Monsieur; make the best use of it.” “Thanks, Madame,” said Rouletabille. “But if your uncle should not return in that time, it will be because my idea was correct.” “But where can he be!” she cried. “I cannot tell you, Madame. He is not in the sack now, at all events.” Mme. Edith cast a withering glance at him and left the room, followed by her husband. The sight of the sack seemed to have stricken Robert Darzac speechless. He had thrown the bag into an abyss and it was brought back empty. After a moment’s pause, Rouletabille spoke: “Larsan is not dead, be sure of that! Never has the situation been so frightful as it is to-day and I must hurry away at once. I have not a minute to lose. Twenty-four hours--in twenty-four hours, I shall be back. But promise me--swear to me, both of you, that you will not quit the château. Swear to me, M. Darzac, that you will watch over your wife--that you will prevent her from leaving these walls, even by force, if it is necessary. Ah--and again--it is no longer necessary that you should sleep in the Square Tower. No, you ought not to do so. In the same wing where M. Stangerson is lodged, there are two empty rooms. You must occupy them. It is absolutely necessary that you should. Sainclair, you will see that this change is made. After my departure, see that neither the one nor the other of them shall set foot in the Square Tower. Adieu! Ah, wait!--let me embrace you--all three.” He pressed us to his heart: M. Darzac first, then myself, and then, falling into the arms of the Lady in Black, he burst into a passion of sobs. This show of weakness and of grief on the part of Rouletabille, in spite of the gravity of the circumstances of his departure, appeared to me very strange. Alas! how easy it was for me to understand it afterward! CHAPTER XV THE SIGHS OF THE NIGHT Two o’clock in the morning! Every person and every thing in the castle seemed wrapped in slumber. Silence brooded over the heavens and the earth. While I stood at my window, my forehead burning and my heart frozen, the sea yielded its last sigh and in a moment the moon appeared riding like a queen in the cloudless sky. Shadows no longer veiled the stars of the night. There, in that vast, motionless slumber which seemed to envelope all the world, I heard the words of the Lithuanian folk song: “But his glance seeks in vain for the beautiful unknown who has covered her head with a veil and whose voice he has never heard.” The words were carried to my ear, clear and distinct, in the still air of the night. Who had pronounced them? Was the voice that of a man or a woman? or was the song only an hallucination evoked by my memories? What should the Prince from the Black lands be doing on the Azure shore with his Lithuanian melodies? And why should his image and his songs pursue me thus?