Reader, have you ever thought what it would be like to be in any way associated with a great criminal case—what the French call a cause célèbre? Lily felt herself the cynosure of a hundred eyes wherever she moved or showed herself; yet very few of the people gazing so curiously at the pretty English girl knew how really closely associated she had been with the awful events which had taken place in the last few weeks at La Solitude. But the mere fact that she had stayed there as the guest of the Count and Countess Polda invested her with a morbid interest in their eyes.
The principal public excitement was concentrated on Cristina, and on that unhappy woman’s mysterious disappearance. She was being searched for high and low, but it was as if the earth had swallowed her up.
And now, to-day, Lily Fairfield was expecting Mr. Bowering, who had been at once telegraphed for by Hercules Popeau. Though everything had been done to save her pain and distress, she had had to submit to a long interrogation on the part of three famous French lawyers, and M. Popeau was now secretly absorbed in the task of devising a way by which his young friend could be spared the terrible ordeal of appearing as a witness at the Countess Polda’s forthcoming trial.
Count Polda was dying, and the hope of finding out where Cristina had hidden herself was being gradually abandoned.
All at once M. Popeau ambled up to where the two young people were sitting.
“Would you like to walk down to the station and meet your English friend?” he said persuasively to Lily.
The girl got up obediently. She moved like an automaton. “I will, if you think I had better do so,” she said dully. The story Angus Stuart had just told her was becoming intolerably real to her.
While walking down the broad road leading to the station Lily suddenly startled M. Popeau.
“There’s something I must ask you,” she said in a low tone. “I want to know about Beppo Polda. Does poor, poor Beppo know?” There was a sob in her throat. “If he does, how strange it is that he isn’t here! Or is he here, after all? Have they arrested him too? I seem to know nothing now of what is really happening!”
The Frenchman hesitated for a moment, then he said gently: