"A one-eyed woman, whom I did not know, to whom Tournemine delivered the little girl to rid us of her, fourteen years ago, when we said she was dead. Oh, who would have thought it!"
"Speak!"
"This woman has just been here; she was below just now. She told me she knew it was I who gave up the child."
"Malediction! who could have told her? Tournemine is at the galleys."
"I denied everything, treating her as a liar. But she maintains that she has found this child again, now grown up; that she knows where she is, and that it only depends upon herself to discover everything."
"Is hell unchained against me to-day?" cried the notary, in a fit of rage that rendered him hideous.
"What shall be said to the woman? What must we promise, to keep her silent?"
"Does she look as if she were poor?"
"As I treated her like a beggar, she shook her reticule—there was money in it."
"And she knows where this young girl is now?"