On leaving the garden, the Piccinino locked the gate himself and handed the key to Michel, reproaching him for his carelessness. "Except for me," he said, "this all-important key--this key that cannot be replaced--would have been left in the lock." A moment's self-possession, before entering the boudoir, had sufficed for the bandit to take the impression of the key on a lump of wax which he always carried with him for emergencies. They had no sooner started down the staircase cut in the rock than Agatha's maid, who was entirely devoted to her, came to her and said: "The young man whom your highness sent for is waiting in the picture gallery." Agatha put her finger to her lips to warn the maid to speak lower on such occasions, and went down to the floor below, where Magnani had been waiting more than half an hour. Poor Magnani had been more dead than alive since he received the princess's mysterious message. Being very different from the Piccinino, he was so far from entertaining the slightest hope that he imagined the worst that could possibly happen. "I must have made a terrible mistake," he said to himself, "in confiding to Michel the secret of my folly. He probably talked about it with his sister, and Mila has seen the princess, who treats her like a spoiled child. The chatter of that girl, who cannot understand the gravity of such a disclosure, terrified and disgusted the princess. But why not banish me without any explanation? What can she say to me that will not be horribly painful and uselessly cruel?" That hour of suspense seemed to him a century. He was cold; he felt as if he should die, when the secret door of the gallery opened noiselessly, and he saw Agatha approaching him, pale with the excitement through which she had just passed, and diaphanous in her white lace cape. The enormous gallery was lighted only by a single glass lamp. It seemed to him that the princess did not walk, but that she glided toward him, after the manner of a ghost. She approached without hesitation, and offered him her hand as if he were an intimate friend. And, as he hesitated to give her his, thinking that he was dreaming, fearing that he might misunderstand the meaning of that gesture, she said to him in a soft but firm voice: "Give me your hand, my child, and tell me if you still feel for me the friendship which you once expressed when you thought that you owed me some gratitude for your mother's cure. Do you remember? I have never forgotten that generous outburst of your heart!" Magnani could not reply. He dared not put Agatha's hand to his lips. He pressed it gently in his as he bent over it. She felt that he was trembling. "You are very timid," she said; "I hope that if you are afraid of me there is no touch of distrust in your fear. I must speak to you quickly; do you answer in the same way. Are you disposed to do me a very great favor, at the risk of your life? I ask it in your mother's name!"