The Mysterious Brougham

In their daily intercourse, they showed themselves very impatient,
except with Mme. Giry, who had been reinstated in her functions. And
their reception of the Vicomte de Chagny, when he came to ask about
Christine, was anything but cordial. They merely told him that she was
taking a holiday. He asked how long the holiday was for, and they
replied curtly that it was for an unlimited period, as Mlle. Daae had
requested leave of absence for reasons of health.

"Then she is ill!" he cried. "What is the matter with her?"

"We don't know."

"Didn't you send the doctor of the Opera to see her?"

"No, she did not ask for him; and, as we trust her, we took her word."

Raoul left the building a prey to the gloomiest thoughts. He resolved,
come what might, to go and inquire of Mamma Valerius. He remembered
the strong phrases in Christine's letter, forbidding him to make any
attempt to see her. But what he had seen at Perros, what he had heard
behind the dressing-room door, his conversation with Christine at the
edge of the moor made him suspect some machination which, devilish
though it might be, was none the less human. The girl's highly strung
imagination, her affectionate and credulous mind, the primitive
education which had surrounded her childhood with a circle of legends,
the constant brooding over her dead father and, above all, the state of
sublime ecstasy into which music threw her from the moment that this
art was made manifest to her in certain exceptional conditions, as in
the churchyard at Perros; all this seemed to him to constitute a moral
ground only too favorable for the malevolent designs of some mysterious
and unscrupulous person. Of whom was Christine Daae the victim? This
was the very reasonable question which Raoul put to himself as he
hurried off to Mamma Valerius.