"A one-eyed woman, whom I did not know, and to whom Tournemine gave the little chit to get rid of her, fourteen years ago, when we wished to make her pass for dead—Ah, who would have thought it!"
"Speak! Speak! Why don't you speak?"
"This one-eyed woman has been here, was down-stairs just now, and told me that she knew it was I who had delivered up the little brat."
"Malediction! Who could have told her? Tournemine is at the galleys."
"I denied it, and treated the one-eyed woman as a liar. But bah! she declares she knows where the girl is now, and that she has grown up, that she has her, and that it only depends on her to discover everything."
"Is hell, then, unchained against me to-day?" exclaimed the notary, in a fit of rage. "What shall I say to this woman? What shall I offer her to hold her tongue? Does she seem well off?"
"As I treated her like a beggar, she shook her hand-basket, and there was money inside of it."
"And she knows where this young girl is now?"
"So she says."
"And she is the daughter of the Countess Sarah Macgregor!" said the stupefied notary; "and just now she offered me so much to declare that her daughter was not dead; and the girl is alive, and I can restore her to her mother! But, then, the false register of her death! If a search were made, I am ruined! This crime may put others on the scent."