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“Waste of time, eh?” he grinned. “Nothing but bills and letters of no importance…. No proof against you…. Tah! I’ll keep my son for all that; and I swear before Heaven that I will not let him go!”

As he was leaving the room, he was joined, near the door, by his man Bernard. The two stopped and talked, in a low voice; but Yvonne heard these words spoken by the servant:

“I have had an answer from the working jeweller. He says he holds himself at my disposal.”

And the count replied:

“The thing is put off until twelve o’clock midday, to-morrow. My mother has just telephoned to say that she could not come before.”

Then Yvonne heard the key turn in the lock and the sound of steps going down to the ground-floor, where her husband’s study was.

She long lay inert, her brain reeling with vague, swift ideas that burnt her in passing, like flames. She remembered her husband’s infamous behaviour, his humiliating conduct to her, his threats, his plans for a divorce; and she gradually came to understand that she was the victim of a regular conspiracy, that the servants had been sent away until the following evening by their master’s orders, that the governess had carried off her son by the count’s instructions and with Bernard’s assistance, that her son would not come back and that she would never see him again.