“It was during the war, messieurs, in 1915. I was Odette Pascal then, a young girl, an honest girl—what you English call straight, isn't it? It was later that I became Aline Laurent-Desrousseaux, you understand? I encountered this Nicholas Staveley in Paris, where I was employed in a Government office. He was very charming, very caressing; he knew how to make himself loved.”
She made a gesture, half cynical, half regretful, and paused for a moment before she continued in a harder tone:
“It did not last long, that honeymoon. I discovered his character, so different from that which I had believed it. He abandoned me, and I was very rejoiced to let him go; but he had taught me things, and forced me to work for him while he had me. When we separated ourselves, in fact, I was no longer the gentle, honest little girl that I had been. All that was finished, you understand?”
Wendover saw that the inspector was taking notes in shorthand. Mme. Laurent-Desrousseaux paused for a time to allow Armadale to catch up.
“The rest is without importance. I became Aline Laurent-Desrousseaux, and I had not any need of Nicholas Staveley. During a long time I had no need of him; but from time to time I heard speak of him, for I had many friends, and some of them could tell a little; and always he was the same. Then is come the report that he was killed at the Front.”
She paused again, with her eye on the inspector's pencil.
“The time passed,” she resumed, “and I desired only to forget him. I believed him well dead, you understand? And then, from one of my friends, I learned that he had been seen again after the war. I disinterested myself from the affair; I had no desire to see him. But suddenly it became of importance to me to satisfy myself about him. It is much complicated, and has nothing to do with him—I pass on. But it was most necessary that I should see him and get him to consent to some arrangements, or an affair of mine would be embarrassed.”
“Embarrassed,” Armadale repeated, to show that he was ready to continue.
“I have consulted my friends,” Mme. Laurent-Desrousseaux pursued. “Some among them have been able to help me, and I have discovered where he was living in London. It was most necessary for me to speak with him. Thus I came over to England, to London. But he is no longer there; he is gone to Lynden Sands, one says. So I procure his address—at Flatt's cottage—and I come myself to Lynden Sands Hotel.”
Armadale's involuntary upward glance from his note-book betrayed the increase in his interest at this point.