"See! look at her portrait again; you have acknowledged that you know it, and that it is Madame Sidney's likeness. Well, I tell you her husband has worn it on his breast night and day for nearly three years, and would not have parted with it for a moment for any less object than enabling me to trace her by it. He asks nothing but to know where she is--nothing but the means of communicating with her. Surely you will tell him that much?"
"Have you asked Dr. Hudson? he knows her better than I," was the cautious questioning reply of the German girl.
"Yes," said Yeldham incautiously; "I went to his house at once, and I waited a long time to see him, but all in vain. He knew Madame Sidney, but he would tell me nothing about her--not even whether she was now in Paris, or ever in the habit of residing in Paris."
"And yet Dr. Hudson is her best friend, and knows more about her than any one in the world."
"Yes, yes; we heard that: then so much was right at least."
Louise Hartmann deliberately sat down, tucked her feet comfortably under her chair, and folded her hands in her lap. Yeldham waited, breathlessly anxious for her to speak. She kept him waiting for some time; but at length she said, slowly and emphatically:
"Soh! you fine English gentleman, who give your word of honour and your sacred and solemn oath, you come to a poor girl like me, and you try to make me tell you about Madame Sidney--who nursed me, and was more good to me than ever any one in the world was before--what the good doctor, her own friend, refuses to tell you. You may go away, sir, back to England; I will tell you nothing--no, not one single word. If this lady's husband is alive, he has done something that makes her think of him as dead, and she knows best. He has made her miserable; for she is not happy, I know that--I often saw that; and he shall never render her miserable again through help of mine."
Yeldham was utterly confounded by the girl's calm speech, and the resolution which showed itself in her face and sounded in her voice. He stood bewildered and silent for several minutes. At length Louise spoke again:
"Please to go away, sir; you have nothing to hear from me, and nothing to say to me more."
He caught joyfully at the anxiety she expressed to get rid of him. Was it not a proof that Katharine was in Paris still--was near; that she was then expecting or fearing her coming? He made another appeal.