The wine-merchant now at his cue, nodded impressively. "Mais oui, I assure monsieur she was quite natural—and she was une belle femme tout le même——"
His wife glanced at him scornfully. "She was a bad mother, and all the house will tell you so. Many times, monsieur, I have gone in with my pass-key and taken the poor little thing downstairs in my arms to give her all the supper she would have had, and many a time, on cold nights, when there was not a stick of fire in their room, and the woman abroad—many a time I have had her sleep in our bed with us—my husband will tell monsieur."
The wine-merchant nodded assent. "She speaks the truth, monsieur."
Bulstrode found presence of mind to wonder. "I suppose Mademoiselle Lascaze left debts?"
The husband and wife exchanged glances.
"En vérité, monsieur," confessed Madame Branchard, "she has left a few, but they are small and not significant; a hundred francs will cover them. It is not for our pockets we are come to monsieur."
Here the sentimentality having been disposed of by the woman, the husband broke in:
"It is like this, Monsieur Balstro" (Bulstrode saw how intimately the hôtel meublé knew him): "In a few moments even the authorities will be here to take charge of the woman's effects and Simone will become the property of the State. She has no relatives, as Monsieur will understand. Thinking, therefore, that monsieur, who is so good, might for some reason care to take an interest in the child's future——"
Branchard coughed and paused. Having given Mr. Bulstrode ample time to speak, to show some signs of life and of his usual quick benevolence, and being greeted with nothing other than quiet, meditative silence, the merchant shrugged and comprehensively relinquished suppositions and hopes in one large gesture.
"In which case" (evidently that of taking for granted that Bulstrode was less good than they had supposed), "in that case we shall put in a plea ourselves for Simone and adopt her."