“Never.”
“But you’ve been in correspondence with her,” said Bayre. “I think I can guess that it was by arrangement with her that ‘Miss Merriman’ happened to be at hand when three poor travellers returned to town in charge of some particularly lively luggage!”
She looked down.
“I wonder you didn’t guess before,” she said drily. “Women are not so ready to undertake the care of other people’s children as I was to undertake the care of my own!”
“Yet you left Creux without him,” said Bayre.
“Not by my own wish,” said she, looking up with flashing eyes. “I was tricked by Marie Vazon. When life grew too intolerable for me at the château, and I made up my mind to run away with my baby, I was obliged to take Marie into my confidence. She pretended to sympathise with me, crossed over with me and the baby to St Luke’s to catch the boat for Southampton, and then when I was on board preparing a cosy place for him in the cabin downstairs, she stole off the boat with my little one and left me to go away without him.”
The remembrance of the trick which had broken her heart when it was played upon her brought fresh tears into the mother’s eyes.
“They were artful customers, those Vazons,” said Bayre; “when you found you had been deceived, had you no thought of trying to get back?”
She nodded emphatically.
“He wouldn’t take me back. It was his cousin’s fault, of course. I wrote and I wrote, and I begged and I begged, but it was of no use. And when I knew his cousin was dead I wrote again to him and also to Miss Eden. From him I got no answer. From Miss Eden I got a sweet, womanly letter telling me she’d tried her best for me but that he simply wouldn’t hear her.”