"Searched?" shrieked Madame Poulain indignantly.
"Yes," said Senator Burton quietly, and trying to speak as if a police Perquisition of a respectable hotel was the most ordinary thing in the world. "They are sending their men at eleven to-morrow morning. Let me add that they and Mrs. Dampier are most eager to study your convenience in every way. They would doubtless choose another time should eleven o'clock be inconvenient to you."
Madame Poulain was now speechless with indignation, and yes, with surprise.
When at last she did speak, her voice trembled with pain and anger.
"To think," she said, turning to her husband, and taking for the moment no notice of her American client—"to think that you and I, Poulain, after having lived here for twenty-one years and a half, should have our hotel searched by the police—as if it were the resort of brigands!" She turned to the Senator, and quietly, not without a measure of dignity, went on:—"And to think that it is you, Monsieur le Sénateur, who we have always thought one of our best patrons, who have brought this indignity upon us!"
"I am very, very sorry for all the trouble you are having about this affair," said Senator Burton earnestly. "And Madame Poulain? I want to assure you how entirely I have always believed your statement concerning this strange business."
"If that is so then why all this—this trouble, Monsieur le Sénateur?"
Husband and wife spoke simultaneously.
"I wonder," exclaimed the Senator, "that you can ask me such a question! I quite admit that the first twenty-four hours I knew nothing of this unfortunate young woman whose cause I championed. But now, Madame Poulain, I have learnt that all she told me of herself is true. Remember she has never faltered in the statement that she came here accompanied by her husband. I, as you know," he lowered his voice, "suppose that in so thinking she is suffering from a delusion. But you cannot expect my view to be shared by those who know her well and who are strangers to you. As I told you only this morning, we hope that towards the end of this week Mrs. Dampier's lawyer will arrive from England."
"But what will happen then?" cried Madame Poulain, throwing up her hands with an excited, passionate gesture. "When will this persecution come to an end? We have done everything we could; we have submitted to odious interrogatories, first from one and then from the other—and now our hotel is to be searched! None of our other clients, and remember the hotel is full, Monsieur le Sénateur, have a suspicion of what is going on, but any moment the affair may become public, and then—then our hotel might empty in a day! Oh, Monsieur le Sénateur"—she clasped her hands together—"If you refuse to think of us, think of our child, think of poor little Virginie!"
"Come, come, Madame Poulain!"
The Senator turned to the good woman's husband, but Poulain's usually placid face bore a look of lowering rage. The mention of his idolised daughter had roused his distress as well as anger.