Then he quitted the room, leaving the bag of money lying on the table, and, descending one or two of the flights of stairs, sent a child whom he knew, and whom he happened to observe leaving another room, to seek for little Laure and bid her return at once. At one moment ere he descended he had thought of turning the key (which he had left outside when he and his visitor entered the apartment) softly in the lock and thereby preventing her from escaping; but he remembered that he would be on the stairs between her and the street, and that he did not mean to go farther than the doorstep. She was safe.
He returned, therefore, saying that the child would be with them shortly. Then to expedite matters (as he said), he asked if it would not be well for him to sign the receipt as desired? The receipt or promise, as to what he undertook to perform.
"That, too, is here," she replied, while Vandecque's shrewd eye noticed, even as she spoke, that the bag of louis' lay untouched as he had left it. "Read it, then sign."
He did read it, laughing inwardly to himself meanwhile, though showing a grave, thoughtful face outwardly, since his sharp intelligence told him that it was a document of no value whatever. It was made out in the form of a receipt from Madame Jasmin--who had had no legal existence for twelve years, and was now dead--to a person whose name was carefully and studiously omitted from the paper (though that, he knew, would afterwards be filled up) on behalf of a female child, "styled Laure by the woman Jasmin." A piece of paper, he told himself, not worth the drop of ink spilt upon it. Or, even though it were so, not ever likely to be used or produced by the individual who took such pains to shroud himself, or herself, in mystery. A worthless document, which he would have signed for a franc, let alone a bag of golden louis.'
Aloud, however, he said:
"To make it legal in the eyes of his Majesty's judges, the name of my dear wife must be altered to that of mine. Shall I do it or will you?"
"You, if it pleases you."
Whereon Vandecque altered the name of "la femme Jasmin" to that of "le Sieur Jasmin," householder, since, as he justly remarked aloud, he was no longer a sailor, and then, with many flourishes--he being a master hand at penmanship of all kinds--signed beneath the document the words, "Christophe Jasmin." Christophe was not his name, but, as he said to himself saturninely, no more was Jasmin, wherefore he might as well assume the one as the other. Moreover, he reflected that should the paper ever see the light again, it might be just as well for him to be able to deny the whole name as a part of it.
As he finished this portion of the transaction, the door opened and little Laure came in, hot and flushed with the games she had been playing with the other gamines of the court, yet with already upon her face the promise of that beauty which was a few years later to captivate the hearts of all who saw her, including the Duc Desparre and the English exile, Walter Clarges. Only, there was as yet no sign upon that face of the melancholy and sorrow which those later years brought to it as she came to understand the life her guardian led; to understand, too, the rottenness of the existence by which she was surrounded. Instead, she was bright and merry as a child of her years should be, gay and insouciant, not understanding nor foreseeing how dark an opening to Life's future was hers. As for externals, she was well enough dressed; better dressed, indeed, than those among whom she mixed. Her little frock of dark Nimes serge--the almost invariable costume of the lowly in France--was not a mass of rags and filth, her boots and thread stockings not altogether a mockery.
"Madame sees," Vandecque remarked, as the child ran towards him with her hands outstretched and her eyes full of gladness, until she stopped, embarrassed at the sight of the strange lady with the solemn glance; "Madame sees; she recognises that she need have no fear, no apprehension."