s took to conceal it. The foot-man
was beating a carpet in the garden. The day before, no one would have
noticed that fact; but the carpet now became a corner-stone on which
the whole town built up its theories. Each individual had his or her
surmise.

The second day, on learning that Madame de Dey declared herself ill, the
principal personages of Carentan, assembled in the evening at the
house of the mayor's brother, an old married merchant, a man of strict
integrity, greatly respected, and for whom Madame de Dey had shown much
esteem. There all the aspirants for the hand of the rich widow had a
tale to tell that was more or less probable; and each expected to turn
to his own profit the secret event which he thus recounted. The public
prosecutor imagined a whole drama to result in the return by night of
Madame de Dey's son, the emigre. The mayor was convinced that a priest
who refused the oath had arrived from La Vendee and asked for asylum;
but the day being Friday, the purchase of a hare embarrassed the good
mayor not a little. The judge of the district court held firmly to the
theory of a Chouan leader or a body of Vendeans hotly pursued. Others
were convinced that the person thus harbored was a noble escaped from
the Paris prisons. In short, they all suspected the countess of being
guilty of one of those generosities, which the laws of the day called
crimes, and punished on the scaffold. The public prosecutor remarked in
a low voice that it would be best to say no more, but to do their best
to save the poor woman from the abyss toward which she was hurrying.

"If you talk about this affair," he said, "I shall be obliged to take
notice of it, and search her house, and _then_--"

He said no more, but all present understood what he meant.

The sincere friends of Madame de Dey were so alarmed about her, that on
the morning of the third day, the procureur-syndic of the commune made
his wife write her a letter, urging her to receive her visitors as usual
that evening. Bolder still, the old merchant went himself in the morning
to Madame de Dey's house, and, strong in the service he wanted to render
her, he insisted on seeing her, and was amazed to find her in the garden
gathering flowers for her vases.

"She must be protecting a lover," thought the old man, filled with
sudden pity for the charming woman.

The singular expression on the countess's face strengthened this
conjecture. Much moved at the thought of such d