Audrey, indeed, spoke French well. But excitement either confused her utterance or affected her voice, for it was a long time before the Frenchwoman gathered the gist of her words.
Then Mademoiselle laughed at her.
“You dream, Madame,” she answered in her rapid French. “Such things do not happen. The busy day has got on your nerves, and you have imagined horrors which have no existence! Bah! A dead woman—all in white—lying upstairs! No, no. You want your dinner. That is all.”
And she laughed, actually laughed, while poor Audrey, stupefied by this unexpected reception of her dreadful news, leaned back against the wall of the narrow passage for a few moments, unable to speak.
At last, seeing that the Frenchwoman remained looking at her in a far from sympathetic manner, she roused herself, and staggering towards the door, said in a whisper:—
“I—I shall go for the police!”
“For what?” echoed Mademoiselle Laure incredulously. “The police! A nice thing for the business that would be, ma foi! To have the police here, to hunt and turn the place upside down in their search for the effects of Madame’s weak nerves! The police! Oh, no. We will have no police here, be sure of that!”
And the voluble Frenchwoman, with the same expression of mocking incredulity on her thin features, seized Audrey by the arm and held her as she would have gone out.
But the younger woman had a will of her own too.
“Mademoiselle,” said she, “you forget that I am the head of this business, the tenant of these premises, and that I have a right to do as I please.”