se. He saw the same expression of
the eyes which Rovere's had borne.

The young woman instinctively made a movement as if to go away, to give
place to the newcomer. But Dantin stopped her with a gesture.

"Do not go away, Mademoiselle. I am the best friend of the one who
sleeps here."

She stopped, pale and timid.

"I know very well that you loved him," he added.

She unconsciously let a frightened cry escape her and looked helplessly
around.

"He told me all," Dantin slowly said. "I am Jacques Dantin. He has
spoken to you of me, I think"----

"Yes," the young woman answered.

Dantin involuntarily shivered. Her voice had the same _timbre_ as
Rovere's.

In the silence of the cemetery, near the tomb, before that name,
Louis-Pierre Rovere, which seemed almost like the presence of his dead
friend, Dantin felt the temptation to reveal to this girl what her
father had wished her to know.

They knew each other without ever having met. One word was enough, one
name was sufficient, in order that the secret which united them should
bring them nearer each other. What Dantin was to Rovere, Rovere had told
Marthe again and again.

Then, as if from the depths of the tomb, Rovere had ordered him to
speak. Jacques Dantin, in the solemn silence of that City of the Dead,
confided to the young girl what her father had tried to tell him. He
spoke rapidly, the words, "A legacy--in trust--a fortune" fell from his
lips. But the young girl quickly interrupted him with a grand gesture.

"I do not wish to know what any one has told you of me. I am the
daughter of a man who awaits me at Blois, who is old, who loves only me,
who needs only me, and I need nothing!"

There was in her tone an accent of command, of resolution, which Dantin
recognized as one of Rovere's most remarkable characteristics.

Had Dantin known nothing, this sound in the voice, this ardent look on
the pale face, would have given him a hint or a suspicion, and have
obliged him to think of Rovere. Rovere lived again in this woman in
black whom Jacques Dantin saw for the first time.

"Then?" asked this friend of the dead man, as if awaiting an order.

"Then," said the young girl in her deep voice, "when you meet me near
this tomb do not speak to me of anything. If you should meet me outside
this cemetery, do not recognize me. The secret which was confided to you
by the one who sleeps there, is the secret of a dead one whom I
adored--_my mother_; and of a livi