Some of Madame Jozain’s neighbors remembered afterward that they slept badly that night—had uneasy dreams and heard mysterious noises; but as there was a thunder-storm about daybreak, they had concluded that it was the electricity in the air which caused their restlessness. However, Pepsie afterward insisted that she had heard Lady Jane cry out, and call “Pepsie!” as if in great distress or fear, and that about the same time there were sounds of hushed voices, rumbling of wheels, and other mysterious noises. But her mother had told her she was dreaming.
So upset was Pepsie by the night’s experience that she looked quite pale and ill as she sat by her window next morning, waiting for Madame Jozain to open the shutters and doors.
How strange! It was eight o’clock, and still no sign of life in the house opposite! The milkman had rung his bell in vain; the brick-dust vender had set his bucket of powdered brick on the very steps, and shrieked his discordant notes close to the door; the clothes-pole man had sung his dismal song, and the snap-bean woman had chanted her three syllables, not unmusically, and yet no one appeared to open the door of Madame Jozain’s house.
At last Pepsie could endure her suspense no longer.
“You go and see what is the matter,” she said to her little handmaid.
So Tite zigzagged across the street, flew up the steps, and pounded vigorously on the door; then she tried the shutters and the gate, and finally even climbed the fence, and peeped in at the black windows. In a trice she was back, gasping and wild-eyed:
“Bress yer, Miss Peps’. W’at I done tol’ yer? Dem’s all gone. Ain’t a stick or nofin’ in dat dar house! Jes’ ez empty ez a gourd!”
At first Pepsie would not believe the dreadful news; but finally, when she was convinced that madame had fled in the night and taken Lady Jane with her, she sank into the very depths of woe and refused to be comforted.
Then Paichoux and Tante Modeste were called into a family council, and Paichoux did his very best to solve the mystery. But all he could learn was from madame’s landlord, who said that Madame Jozain had paid her rent and given up her key, saying that she had decided, very suddenly, to follow her son. This was all the information the landlord could give, and Paichoux returned dejectedly with this meager result.
“I had my plans,” he said, “and I was waiting for the right moment to put them in operation. Now, the child has disappeared, and I can do nothing.”