Next morning La Martinière enlarged upon the terrors of the time, painting them in glowing colours to her lady, when she told her all that had happened the previous night, and handed her the mysterious casket, with much fear and trembling. Both she and Baptiste (who stood in the corner as white as a sheet, kneading his cap in his hand from agitation and anxiety) implored her, in the name of all the saints, to take the greatest precautions in opening it. She, weighing and examining the unopened mystery in her hand, said with a smile, "You are a couple of bogies! The wicked scoundrels outside, who, as you say yourselves, spy out all that goes on in every house, know, no doubt, quite as well as you and I do, that I am not rich, and that there are no treasures in this house worth committing a murder for. Is my life in danger, do you think? Who could have any interest in the death of an old woman of seventy-three, who never persecuted any evil-doers except those in her own novels; who writes mediocre poetry, incapable of exciting any one's envy; who has nothing to leave behind her but the belongings of an old maid, who sometimes goes to Court, and two or three dozen handsomely-bound books with gilt edges. And, alarming as your account is, La Martinière, of the apparition of this man, I cannot believe that he meant me any harm, so----" La Martinière sprang three paces backwards, and Baptiste fell on one knee with a hollow, "Ah!" as Mademoiselle Scuderi pressed a projecting steel knob, and the lid of the casket flew open with a certain amount of noise. Great was her surprise to see that it contained a pair of bracelets, and a necklace richly set in jewels. She took them out and as she spoke in admiration of the marvellous workmanship of the necklace, La Martinière cast glances of wonder at the bracelets, and cried, again and again, that Madame Montespan herself did not possess such jewelry. "But why is it brought to me?" cried Mademoiselle Scuderi. "What can this mean?" She saw, however, a little folded note at the bottom of the casket, and in this she rightly thought she would find the key to the mystery. When she had read what was written in the note, it fell from her trembling hands; she raised an appealing look to heaven, and then sank down half fainting in her chair. Baptiste and La Martinière hurried to her, in alarm. "Oh!" she cried, in a voice stifled by tears, "the mortification! The deep humiliation! Has it been reserved for me to undergo this in my old age? Have I ever been frivolous, like some of the foolish young creatures? Are words, spoken half in jest, to be found capable of such a terrible interpretation? Am I, who have been faithful to all that is pure and good from my childhood, to be made virtually an accomplice in the crimes of this terrible confederation?"