in that wing.

You may guess what strange thought floated across my brain. I repelled it
at first as sheer madness; but remembering, within the field of my
somewhat extended experience, certain facts that lent probability to that
thought, I entertained it with a sort of cynical irony, and I was almost
ready to admit it, as an odious but decisive denouement. The early dawn
found me struggling still in this mental anguish, calling up my
recollections, examining in a childish way the most minute circumstances
that might tend to confirm or to banish my suspicions. Excess of fatigue,
brought on at last two hours of prostration, from which I emerged with a
better command of my reason. It was impossible for me to doubt the reality
of the apparition that had struck my eyes during the night; but it
appeared to me that I had put upon it a hasty and senseless construction,
and that my ailing spirit had attributed to it the least likely
explanation.

I went down at half past ten o'clock as usual. Madame de Palme was in the
parlor; she must therefore have spent the night at the chateau.
Nevertheless, a mere glance at her was enough to remove from my mind the
very shadow of suspicion. She was talking quietly in the center of a
group. She greeted me with her usual gentle smile. I felt relieved of an
immense weight. I was escaping a torment of such a painful and bitter
nature, that the positive impression of my previous grief, freed from the
disgraceful complications with which I had for a moment thought it
aggravated, appeared almost pleasant. Never had my heart rendered to this
woman a more tender and more sincere homage. I was grateful to her from
the bottom of my soul, for having restored purity to my wound and to my
memory.