But I was working for her dear sake; working that I might win her in the end.
A week later Mr. Farewell was absent from home for the evening. Estelle had retired to her room, and I was a welcome visitor in the kitchen, where Madame Dupont had laid out a regular feast for me. I had brought a couple of bottles of champagne with me and, what with the unaccustomed drink and the ogling and love-making to which I treated her, a hundred kilos of foolish womanhood was soon hopelessly addled and incapable. I managed to drag her to the sofa, where she remained quite still, with a beatific smile upon her podgy face, her eyes swimming in happy tears.
I had not a moment to lose. The very next minute I was in the study and with a steady hand was opening the drawers of the bureau and turning over the letters and papers which I found therein.
Suddenly an exclamation of triumph escaped my lips.
I held a packet in my hand on which was written in a clear hand: “The papers of Mlle. Estelle Bachelier.” A brief examination of the packet sufficed. It consisted of a number of letters written in English, which language I only partially understand, but they all bore the same signature, “John Pike and Sons, solicitors,” and the address was at the top, “168 Cornhill, London.” It also contained my Estelle’s birth certificate, her mother’s marriage certificate, and her police registration card.
I was rapt in the contemplation of my own ingenuity in having thus brilliantly attained my goal, when a stealthy noise in the next room roused me from my trance and brought up vividly to my mind the awful risks which I was running at this moment. I turned like an animal at bay to see Estelle’s beautiful face peeping at me through the half-open door.
“Hist!” she whispered. “Have you got the papers?”
I waved the packet triumphantly. She, excited and adorable, stepped briskly into the room.
“Let me see,” she murmured excitedly.
But I, emboldened by success, cried gaily: