Without reply, Lucretia took the keys from Gabriel's half-reluctant hand,
and passed into her husband's writing-room. When she had entered, she
locked the door. She passed at once to a huge secretary, of which the
key was small as a fairy's work. She opened it with ease by one of the
counterfeits. No love-correspondence--the first object of her search,
for she was woman--met her eye. What need of letters, when interviews
were so facile? But she soon found a document that told all which love-
letters could tell,--it was an account of the moneys and possessions of
Madame Bellanger; and there were pencil notes on the margin: "Vautran
will give four hundred thousand francs for the lands in Auvergne,--to be
accepted. Consult on the power of sale granted to a second husband.
Query, if there is no chance of the heir-at-law disputing the moneys
invested in Madame B.'s name,"--and such memoranda as a man notes down in
the schedule of properties about to be his own. In these inscriptions
there was a hideous mockery of all love; like the blue lights of
corruption, they showed the black vault of the heart. The pale reader
saw what her own attractions had been, and, fallen as she was, she smiled
superior in her bitterness of scorn. Arranged methodically with the
precision of business, she found the letters she next looked for; one
recognizing Dalibard's services in the detection of the conspiracy, and
authorizing him to employ the police in the search of Pierre Guillot,
sufficed for her purpose. She withdrew, and secreted it. She was about
to lock up the secretary, when her eye fell on the title of a small
manuscript volume in a corner; and as shet read, she pressed one hand
convulsively to her heart, while twice with the other she grasped the
volume, and twice withdrew the grasp. The title ran harmlessly thus:
"Philosophical and Chemical Inquiries into the Nature and Materials of
the Poisons in Use between the Fourteenth and Sixteenth Centuries."
Hurriedly, and at last as if doubtful of herself, she left the
manuscript, closed the secretary, and returned to Gabriel.