'In my place, repeated Martin. 'But, as I have told you before, I had arranged with her that she should go to London with me.'
'That arrangement can continue, only the letter should say that she could go with me instead of with you.'
'And what on earth will you do with her when you get her to town?'
'I do not intend taking her to town at all.'
'My dear Madame Du Tertre,' said Martin, looking up, with a shade of annoyance in his face, 'we are evidently playing at cross purposes, and I shall be glad if you will explain yourself to me.'
'My dear Monsieur Martin, as I told you before, you are too honest and straightforward, not merely to practise diplomacy, but, as I find now, to comprehend it. Armed with this letter from you, I shall go and see this young lady--she will be most anxious to start off at once with me, and I shall make no opposition. On the contrary, I shall express my extreme readiness, but shall suggest that, as she is weak and unnerved by the events of the day, she had better take some restorative. Now, among other odd varieties in my life, I have been a garde-malade, and I know quite sufficient of medicine to enable me to administer to our young friend, with perfect safety and without the remotest chance of doing her any harm, a draught, which, instead of being a restorative, will be a powerful soporific.'
'Soporific!' cried Martin, aghast.
'How wrong of me to have used that word!' said Pauline, who could not refrain from smiling at the horror-struck expression of his face; 'It fills your mind with thoughts of castles and spectres and bleeding nuns; it is in truth the language of romance. I should have said an anodyne, which means exactly the same thing, but being a medical term is more proper for use.
'Well, but,' said Martin, very little relieved by the explanation, 'the effect will be still the same. This draught, by whatever name you may choose to call it, which you propose to give her, will send her into a deep sleep.'
'Unquestionably.'