"I know!"
"You know? Well, you don't know that the dead man found in the ditch was the Viscount—"
"I saw him killed!" in the same measured tone.
"Oh!" She paused, but recovering, she continued, in a lower voice and looking furtively around: "You cannot know that she came back with no good end. I believe it was to meet the gentleman who came in at the same time, a-pretending to buy the house—"
"M. Cantagnac!" muttered the inventor, a tolerable flock of suspicions which that ingenious individual had unintentionally excited, rushing upon his brain.
"He's no Marseillais—he's a German, and he is a secret agent. He is—he is—well, I may make a clean breast of it—he is one you ought to have remembered, the major whom you cudgelled in Munich—"
"Von Sendlingen!"
"Yes, and a colonel—I do not know but he is a general now; he has the manner and means of one!" said Hedwig, shuddering. "He knows all of madame's peccadilloes—ay, all her crimes—"
"Crimes! be careful, girl!"
"Yes, crime, for she killed her little boy! Thank heaven, I had no hand in that—she would not trust me there, and that shows I am not so very bad a woman, don't it? She poisoned the little innocent as surely as we stand here under the eye of God!"