‘Madame,’ said Laurent sternly, ‘I bid you cease these theatrical pretences. Your unhappy husband saw you last night when you three times seized the decanter which had been left for him.’
She gasped: ‘You liar!’
‘That is all very well, madame,’ responded Laurent, ‘but my eyes are mine, and I have known the truth for months past. Why do you venture on a hope so vain? Now, I will tell you plainly, Madame Armstrong, you are going on the way to hell. You are to be stopped, and you shall be stopped. Pray make no mistake as to the authority that is to be exerted. It shall be exerted as mildly as you permit. It shall be exerted as inexorably as the necessities of the case demand I have told you already many times into what a pitfall you were descending, but until last night I never dared to warn your husband. He knows the truth now, knows it all, and he leaves you in my hands. You have not heeded advice or beseeching, and—I say it, believe me, with deep reluctance—we must draw a cordon about you, and protect you from yourself. Pray understand, madame, it is a protective cordon only, and your own action may relax it at any time; but your actions will be watched, as it is my duty to tell you, to the extremest scruple.’
‘What do you mean to do? Paul heard her ask in a husky, panting voice, which made him figure in his own mind a hunted creature almost run to ground.
‘Nothing more,’ Laurent replied, ‘nothing more, madame, believe me—nothing more than is dictated by the necessities of the case. You have an ordonnance dating from Paris.
I have instructed the pharmacien that he is no longer to respect it.’
Annette whined at this like a child robbed of a toy.
‘I have forbidden him this morning,’ Laurent pursued, ‘to supply you, without my special direction, with any drug whatever, and I have given him particular orders about the eau’des Carmes. I am now about to tell the hotel people that you are under my care and treatment, and that you will be allowed only a measured quantity of wine per diem.’
‘You mean to expose me to them?’ Annette asked
‘I do not propose to expose madame to anybody,’ Laurent responded, ‘but if madame chooses to expose herself——’