“They were married at eleven o’clock one morning, and went afterwards to a café for déjeûner. The young man that day was ill at ease and nervous. He kept looking about him as though he was afraid of being followed. He spoke vaguely of danger from the anger of his noble relations. They were scarcely seated at luncheon before a man came quietly into the place and whispered a few words in his ear. Whatever those few words were, the young man went suddenly pale and called for his hat and stick. He wrote an address on a piece of paper and gave it to the girl. He begged her to follow him in an hour—he would introduce her then to his friends. And he left her alone. The girl was troubled and uneasy. He had gone off without even paying for the luncheon. He had the air of a desperate man. She began to realize what she had done.
“She was preparing to depart when an Englishman, who had been lunching at the other end of the room, came over, and, with a word of apology, sat down by her side. He saw that she was young, and a fellow-countryman, and he told her very gravely that he was sure she could not be aware of the character of the man with whom she had been lunching. Her eyes grew wide open with horror. The man, he said, was the illegitimate son of a French nobleman, and his mother had been married to a guide—her guide! He had perhaps the worst character of any man in Paris. He had been tried for murder, imprisoned for forgery, and he was now suspected of being the leader of a band of desperate criminals who were dreaded all over Paris. This and other things he told her of the man whom she had just married. The girl listened as though turned to stone, with the piece of paper which he had given her crumpled up in her hands. Then the police came. They asked her questions. She pretended at first to know nothing. At last she addressed the commissionary. If she gave him the address where this young man could be found, he and all his friends, might she depart without mention being made of her, or her name appearing in any way? The commissionary agreed, and she gave him the piece of paper. The Englishman—it was Gilbert Deyes—took her back to her hotel, and the police captured Jean le Roi and the whole band of his associates. The girl returned to England that night. Jean le Roi was sentenced to six years’ penal servitude. His time was up last week.”
“What a diabolical plot!” Macheson exclaimed. “But the marriage! It could have been annulled, surely?”
“Perhaps,” she answered, “but I did not dare to face the publicity. I felt that I should never be able to look any one in the face again. I had given my name to the guide Johnson as Clara Hurd. I hoped that they might never find me.”
“They cannot do you any harm,” Macheson declared. “Let me go with you to the lawyers. They will see that you are not molested.”
She shook her head.
“It is not so easy,” she said. “The marriage was quite legal. To have it annulled I should have to enter a suit. The whole story would come out. I could never live in England afterwards.”
“But you don’t mean,” he protested, “to remain bound to this blackguard all your life!”
“How can I free myself,” she asked, “except by making myself the laughing-stock of the country?”