She gazed fixedly at him.
"What will you give me?"
"Anything you like."
"Anything I like?"
"Yes."
"You shall have the address."
She dropped her head; then, with a brusque movement, she pulled to the door, which closed behind her.
Marius found himself alone.
He dropped into a chair, with his head and both elbows on his bed, absorbed in thoughts which he could not grasp, and as though a prey to vertigo.
All that had taken place since the morning, the appearance of the angel, her disappearance, what that creature had just said to him, a gleam of hope floating in an immense despair,-- this was what filled his brain confusedly.
All at once he was violently aroused from his revery.
He heard the shrill, hard voice of Jondrette utter these words, which were fraught with a strange interest for him:--
"I tell you that I am sure of it, and that I recognized him."
Of whom was Jondrette speaking?
Whom had he recognized?
M. Leblanc? The father of "his Ursule"? What!
Did Jondrette know him? Was Marius about to obtain in this abrupt and unexpected fashion all the information without which his life was so dark to him? Was he about to learn at last who it was that he loved, who that young girl was?
Who her father was?