“I am very sorry, Lady Blakeney,” he said in simple, deferential tones, “that the prison authorities, who at my request are granting you this interview at such an unusual hour, have made a slight condition to your visit.”
“A condition?” she asked. “What is it?”
“You must forgive me,” he said, as if purposely evading her question, “for I give you my word that I had nothing to do with a regulation that you might justly feel was derogatory to your dignity. If you will kindly step in here a wardress in charge will explain to you what is required.”
He pushed open the door, and stood aside ceremoniously in order to allow her to pass in. She looked on him with deep puzzlement and a look of dark suspicion in her eyes. But her mind was too much engrossed with the thought of her meeting with Percy to worry over any trifle that might—as her enemy had inferred—offend her womanly dignity.
She walked into the room, past Chauvelin, who whispered as she went by:
“I will wait for you here. And, I pray you, if you have aught to complain of summon me at once.”
Then he closed the door behind her. The room in which Marguerite now found herself was a small unventilated quadrangle, dimly lighted by a hanging lamp. A woman in a soiled cotton gown and lank grey hair brushed away from a parchment-like forehead rose from the chair in which she had been sitting when Marguerite entered, and put away some knitting on which she had apparently been engaged.
“I was to tell you, citizeness,” she said the moment the door had been closed and she was alone with Marguerite, “that the prison authorities have given orders that I should search you before you visit the prisoner.”
She repeated this phrase mechanically like a child who has been taught to say a lesson by heart. She was a stoutish middle-aged woman, with that pasty, flabby skin peculiar to those who live in want of fresh air; but her small, dark eyes were not unkindly, although they shifted restlessly from one object to another as if she were trying to avoid looking the other woman straight in the face.
“That you should search me!” reiterated Marguerite slowly, trying to understand.