He did not actually expect
any one, but a certain surreptitiousness in the approach of this
visitor, and the low knock on the door, made him suspect that this
was grist for his mill.
He opened the door and, seeing that it was a woman, stepped back.
When she had entered, he closed the door while she stood watching
him in the dark passage, beneath the shadow of her hood. Knowing
the value of such small details, he locked the door rather
ostentatiously and dropped the key into his pocket.
"And now, madame," he said reassuringly, as he followed his visitor
into the room where a shaded lamp lighted his writing-table. She
threw back her hood, and it was Mathilde! The surprise on de
Casimir's face was genuine enough. Romance could not have brought
about this visit, nor love be its motive.
"Something has happened," he said, looking at her doubtfully.
"Where is my father?" was the reply.
"Unless there has been some mistake," he answered glibly, "he is at
home in bed."
She smiled contemptuously into his innocent face.
"There has been a mistake," she said; "they came to arrest him to-
night."
De Casimir made a gesture of anger and seemed to be mentally
assigning a punishment to some blunderer.
"And?" he asked, without looking at her.
"And he escaped."
"For the moment?"
"No; he has left Dantzig."
Something in her voice--the cold note of warning--made him glance
uneasily at her. This was not a woman to be deceived, and yet she
was womanly enough to fear deception and to resent her own fears,
visiting her anger on any who aroused them.
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