“Do you think, then, that it’s his young wife he is keeping shut up there?”
By the look of consternation which passed over Miss Eden’s face, Bayre saw that this idea had not occurred to her.
“I never thought of that,” she said quickly. Then, as this suggestion seemed to fill her with horror, she cried quickly, “Let’s ask Nini about her. Oh, no, oh, no, I’m sure it can’t have been his wife.”
And Miss Eden rose from her seat, and hurrying across the room, opened a door at the back and brought in the peasant girl with a teacup in one hand and a cloth in the other.
“Nini lived at your uncle’s house all the time from before his marriage till a few weeks ago, when her grandmother had to send for her to come back here to her own home,” explained Miss Eden. “Ask her and she will tell you what she thought of young Mrs Bayre, and whether she was the kind of person who could be shut up against her will. You can ask her in English or French; she speaks both.”
Nini, who looked intelligent for her class, nodded assent to this speech, looking down modestly upon the floor. But Bayre had a sort of idea that, simple as she looked, he should get no one word more out of her than she chose to give. Obediently, however, he began to ask her questions.
“You were at Creux when young Madame Bayre ran away?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Did you see her run away?”
“No, sir. She took Marie Vazon with her. She had better have taken me. I shouldn’t have left her in the lurch and let her go off without her child as Marie did.”