"I really think you must be mad, my dear, to go for a country walk in such weather as
this. You have had some very strange notions for the last two months. You drag me to the
seaside in spite of myself, when you have never once had such a whim during all the
forty-four years that we have been married. You chose Fecamp, which is a very dull
town, without consulting me in the matter, and now you are seized with such a rage for
walking, you who hardly ever stir out on foot, that you want to take a country walk on the
hottest day of the year. Ask d'Apreval to go with you, as he is ready to gratify all your
whims. As for me, I am going back to have a nap."
Madame de Cadour turned to her old friend and said:
"Will you come with me, Monsieur d'Apreval?"
He bowed with a smile, and with all the gallantry of former years:
"I will go wherever you go," he replied.
"Very well, then, go and get a sunstroke," Monsieur de Cadour said; and he went back to
the Hotel des Bains to lie down for an hour or two.
As soon as they were alone, the old lady and her old companion set off, and she said to
him in a low voice, squeezing his hand:
"You are mad," he said in a whisper. "I assure you that you are mad. Think of the risk
you are running. If that man--"
"Oh! Henri, do not say that man, when you are speaking of him."
"Very well," he said abruptly, "if our son guesses anything, if he has any suspicions, he
will have you, he will have us both in his power. You have got on without seeing him for
the last forty years. What is the matter with you to-day?"
They had been going up the long street that leads from the sea to the town, and now they
turned to the right, to go to Etretat. The white road stretched in front of him, then under a
blaze of brilliant sunshine, so they went on slowly in the burning heat. She had taken her
old friend's arm, and was looking straight in front of her, with a fixed and haunted gaze,
and at last she said:
"And so you have not seen him again, either?"
