Behind the little door with Adeline and David! " 'A mystery seems to hang over these chambers,' said she, 'which it is, perhaps, my lot to develop; I will, at least, see to what that door leads.' " The little door opens onto a series of apartments which must be the same rooms discovered by La Motte on his first trip below the trap-door in the closet. Somehow she misses the chest with the skeleton in it, but not the queer old dagger lying on the floor of one of the cells: "with a trembling hand she took it up, and upon a closer view perceived that it was spotted and stained with rust." Her next discovery is the very heart and soul of the novel: "It was a small roll of paper, tied with a string, and covered with dust. Adeline picked it up, and on opening it perceived an handwriting. She attempted to read it, but the part of the manuscript she looked at was so much obliterated, that she found this difficult, though what few words were legible impressed her with curiosity and terror, and induced her to return with it immediately to her chamber."

Chloe Chard's intro (a masterpiece, as these things go) is never better than on the subject of this manuscript, but for that we need to wait a few more episodes. Because on the way back to her chamber, Adeline is made privy to a conversation between La Motte and the Marquis that concerns her deeply. "[S]he heard the Marquis pronounce her name with very unusual emphasis. She paused. 'I adore her,' pursued the Marquis, 'and by heaven'-- He was interrupted by La Motte. 'My lord, remember your promise.'

" 'I do,' replied the Marquis, 'and I will abide by it. But we trifle. To-morrow I will declare myself, and then I shall know both what to hope and how to act.' " At this Adeline's curiosity is insuperable. "She stole softly down a few steps, that she might catch the accents of the speakers, but they were so low that she could only now and then distinguish a few words. 'Her father, say you?' said the Marquis. 'Yes, my lord, her father. I am well informed of what I say.'" At this, Adeline's distress is complete, if somewhat misplaced: "It was her father only of whom she thought. She doubted not that he had pursued and discovered her retreat, and, though his conduct appeared very inconsistent with his former behaviour in abandoning her to strangers, her fears suggested that it would terminate in some new cruelty. She did not hesitate to pronounce this the danger of which Theodore had warned her; but it was impossible to surmise how he had gained his knowledge of it, or how he had become sufficiently acquainted with her story, except through La Motte, her apparent friend and protector, whom she was thus, though unwillingly, led to suspect of treachery." It falls to the reader to suspect him and the Marquis of much worse. Now coming soon on The Ingredient!!! A tribute to Michel Foucault. And Chloe Chard.