"What is he like?"
Another haphazard shot.
"He is tall and dark, and, oh! so good-looking, with a beautifully white skin and a pink complexion."
"That is he!" cried both girls together.
"The scoundrel! But tell me," went on Edith, whose excitement was readily construed as the pangs of jealousy, "who is the creature that lives with him?"
"We think she is a music-hall artiste," replied Marie. "At least, that is what the people say. I have not heard yet what hall she appears in. They say she is very pretty. Are you going to throw vitriol over her?"
"Not I," said Edith, with a fine scorn. "Do they live there alone?"
"Yes, quite alone. They rent the place from Père Didon. He owns most of the houses in this street, you know, and is a regular skinflint. He won't let any one get behind with their rent for an hour. He is old, so old that you would not think that he could live another week, yet he is that keen after his francs you would imagine he was a young man anxious to get money for a gay life. You ought to have heard the row here last Saturday when he turned the people out from their rooms where your lover now lives with his mistress. It was terrible. There was a poor woman with two sick children."
How much further the revelations as to Père Didon's iniquity might have gone, Miss Talbot could not say, but at that moment there came an interruption.
From the opposite doorway appeared the figure of Mlle. Beaucaire, carrying a small bag. She was followed by a man, tall, slight, and closely muffled up, who shouldered a larger portmanteau. Edith grabbed both the girls, and pulled them close to her against the closed door behind them.