demoiselle, he has vindicated himself, I even ..." Monsieur
Fuselier stopped short, intensely pained, not knowing how to tell
Elizabeth Dollon the terrible news.

At once she cried: "Ah, monsieur, you hesitate! You have learned
something fresh? You are on the track of the assassins?"

"It is certain ... your brother is not guilty!"

The poor girl's countenance suddenly brightened. She had passed a
horrible night after her return to Paris, and the receipt of the wire
from Police Headquarters.

"What a nightmare!" she cried. "But the telegram said he was
injured--nothing serious, is it?... Where is he now? Can I see him?"

"Mademoiselle," said the magistrate, "your brother has had a terrible
shock!... It would be better!... I fear that!..."

Suddenly Elizabeth Dollon cried:

"Oh, monsieur, how you said that! How can seeing me do him harm?"

As Monsieur Fuselier did not reply, she burst into tears:

"You are hiding something from me! The papers said this morning that he
also was a victim! Swear to me that he is not?"

"But ..."

"You _are_ hiding something from me!" The poor girl was frantic with
terror: she wrung her hands in a state of despair: "Where is he? I must
see him! Oh, take pity on me!"

As she watched the magistrate's downcast look, his air of discomfiture,
the horrid truth flashed on Elizabeth Dollon:

"Dead!" she cried. She was shaken with sobs.

"Mademoiselle!... Oh, mademoiselle!" implored the magistrate, filled
with pity. He tried to find some words of consolation, and this
confirmed her worst fears:

"I swear to you!... It is certain your brother was not guilty!"

The distracted girl was beyond listening to the magistrate's words!
Huddled up in an arm-chair, she lay inert, collapsed. Presently she rose
like a person moving in some mad dream, her eyes wild:

"Take me to him!... I want to see him! They have killed him for me!... I
must see him!"

Such was her insistence, the violence with which she claimed the right
to go to her brother, to kneel beside him, that Monsieur Fuselier dared
not refuse her this consolation.

"Control yourself, I beg of you! I am going to take you to him; but, for
Heaven's sake, be reasonable! Control yourself!"

With his eyes he sought for the moral support of Fandor, whose presence
he suddenly remembered. But our journalist, taking advantage of the
momentary confusion, had quietly slipped from the room.

Evidently some unpleasant occurrence had upset t