Edith advanced another pace into the darkest corner of the shop, quickly arranged the shawl over her head and shoulders, and, hastily murmuring her thanks, rushed forth into the street again, leaving hat and gloves behind in her haste.
The fruit-seller was far too wise a woman to call after the other and apprise her of the loss.
"It must be serious, this adventure," she mused. "And yet the novelists say that the English are cold! For me, now, I think that women are very much alike all over the world."
And with this bit of Provençal philosophy she picked up the discarded articles and discovered, to her joy, that they must be worth at least ten francs.
"Thirty-five francs for an old shawl is a good night's work," she murmured. "Who could dream of such fortune at this hour? To-morrow I will buy a candle and place it in the church of Notre Dame de la Garde."
Meanwhile Edith was just in time to see Mlle. Beaucaire either abandon her search or resolve it in some manner, for the lady once more resumed her progress towards the old harbour, in whose placid bosom could be seen the reflections of numberless lights from the small promontory beyond, crowned with the Fort St. Nicholas and the Chateau du Phare.
Looking neither right nor left, but hastening onwards with rapid strides, mademoiselle crossed the rough pavement of the Quai de la Fraternité, bearing away diagonally towards the left.
But if the Frenchwoman was a good walker, Edith Talbot was a better one, and now that she no longer feared notice—for she draped the large shawl as elegantly about her shoulders as any woman in Marseilles—she decided to adopt a little strategy. Instead of keeping directly behind mademoiselle she broke into a run under the shadow of the houses. By thus making up ground she approached the narrow street towards which the Frenchwoman was heading almost simultaneously with her quarry, but apparently from an opposite direction. The aspect of the thoroughfare through which the two women sped was forbidding in the extreme. The houses were many storeys in height, of disreputable appearance, and so close together on both sides that, were other conditions equal, an active man might easily spring from one room into another across the street.
The walls appeared to be honeycombed with doors and windows, while an indescribable number of shutters, balconies, projecting poles and clothes-lines created such a medley in the darkness, which was only made visible by a solitary bracket lamp, that Edith felt some anxiety as to whether or not she would be able to recognize the house into which mademoiselle disappeared, should her destination be close at hand.