She bit her lip. "_Bon Dieu!_" she muttered. "Who could have foreseen such an accident? Do you think that he suspects anything?" "Doubtless. To begin, I left early this morning, in breach of an agreement to travel with him. When he learns, in addition, that I am travelling with my mother and sister, whom yesterday I did not possess----" Madame looked at me, as if she would strike me. "What will you do?" she cried. "It is for my mother to say," I answered politely. And I helped myself very indifferently to cheese. "She dictated this policy." She was white with rage, and perhaps alarm; I chuckled secretly, seeing her condition. But rage availed her little; she had to humble herself. "What do you advise?" she said at last. "There is only one course open," I answered. "We must brazen it out." She agreed. But this, though a very easy course to advise, was one anything but easy to pursue. I discovered that, a few minutes later, when I went out to see if the carriage was ready, and found De Géol in the doorway with a face as hard as his own hills. "You are starting?" he said. I muttered that I was. "I find that I have to congratulate you," he continued, with a smile of unpleasant meaning. "On what, Monsieur?" "On finding your family," he answered, looking at me with a bitter sort of humour. "To discover both a mother and a sister in twenty-four hours must be great happiness. But--may I give you a hint, M. le Vicomte?" "If you please," I said, with desperate coolness. "Then if--being so happy in making discoveries--you happen to light next on M. Froment--on M. Froment, the firebrand of Nîmes, false Capuchin, and false traitor!--do not adopt him also! That is all." "I am not acquainted with him," I said coldly. He had spoken with passion and fire. "Do not become so," he answered. I shrugged my shoulders, and he said no more; and in a moment Madame and Mademoiselle came out, and took their seats, and I set out to walk up the hill beside the horses. The ascent was steep and long and toilsome, and a dozen times as we climbed out of the valley we had to halt to breathe the cattle; a dozen times I looked back at the grey mountain inn lying on the desolate grey plateau at our feet. Always I found the Baron looking up at us, stern and gaunt and motionless as the house before which he stood. And I shivered. CHAPTER XVII. FROMENT OF NÎMES.