onsieur de Savarus."

Mademoiselle de Watteville hastily went to a window looking out over the
garden.

At ten o'clock Albert de Savarus had not yet appeared. The storm that
threatened now burst. Some of the gentlemen sat down to cards, finding
the thing intolerable. The Abbe de Grancey, who did not know what to
think, went to the window where Rosalie was hidden, and exclaimed aloud
in his amazement, "He must be dead!"

The Vicar-General stepped out into the garden, followed by Monsieur de
Watteville and his daughter, and they all three went up to the kiosk. In
Albert's rooms all was dark; not a light was to be seen.

"Jerome!" cried Rosalie, seeing the servant in the yard below. The Abbe
looked at her with astonishment. "Where in the world is your master?"
she asked the man, who came to the foot of the wall.

"Gone--in a post-chaise, mademoiselle."

"He is ruined!" exclaimed the Abbe de Grancey, "or he is happy!"

The joy of triumph was not so effectually concealed on Rosalie's face
that the Vicar-General could not detect it. He affected to see nothing.

"What can this girl have had to do with this business?" he asked
himself.

They all three returned to the drawing-room, where Monsieur de
Watteville announced the strange, the extraordinary, the prodigious news
of the lawyer's departure, without any reason assigned for his evasion.
By half-past eleven only fifteen persons remained, among them Madame de
Chavoncourt and the Abbe de Godenars, another Vicar-General, a man of
about forty, who hoped for a bishopric, the two Chavoncourt girls, and
Monsieur de Vauchelles, the Abbe de Grancey, Rosalie, Amedee de Soulas,
and a retired magistrate, one of the most influential members of the
upper circle of Besancon, who had been very eager for Albert's election.
The Abbe de Grancey sat down by the Baroness in such a position as to
watch Rosalie, whose face, usually pale, wore a feverish flush.

"What can have happened to Monsieur de Savarus?" said Madame de
Chavoncourt.

At this moment a servant in livery brought in a letter for the Abbe de
Grancey on a silver tray.

"Pray read it," said the Baroness.

The Vicar-General read the letter; he saw Rosalie suddenly turn as white
as her kerchief.

"She recognizes the writing," said he to himself, after glancing at the
girl over his spectacles. He folded up the letter, and calmly put it in
his pocket without a word. In three minutes he had met three looks from
Rosalie w