"So it's you, Guillaume ?" said she.

"Will you come up for a moment ?" He immediately did so, understanding that she wished to speak to him alone and tranquillise him.

It was a question of the great secret between them, that one thing of which his sons knew nothing, and which, after Salvat's crime, had brought him much anguish, through his fear that it might be divulged.

When he reached Mere-Grand's room she at once took him to the hiding-place near her bed, and showed him the cartridges of the new explosive, and the plans of the terrible engine of warfare which he had invented.

He found them all as he had left them.