“Oh, Katy, Katy!” Madame exclaimed, bursting into tears and throwing her arms around Katy’s neck. “I do not deserve this from you. God bless you, and make you happy. Carl is worthy of you, even if he has been soiled a little by contact with me. It is only a speck which your love will wipe out. I tried to make him care for me but could not. He was never more to me than a friend.”
All this she said very low, as she continued to cry.
There was a stir at the end of the long piazza of the Grand Villa. The Count had come out and was looking curiously in our direction. In a moment Madame was herself,—erect and dignified and speaking in a whisper.
“We leave to-morrow. It is not necessary that my party should know everything or anything. They despise the bourgeois; they would despise Julina Smith. They think I come from a good old Norman family, now extinct. Let them continue to think so. I shall tell them I had met some of you before. I know what to say;—trust me, and—good-bye.”
She wrung Katy’s hand, kissed Paul and went across the lawn and piazza to where the Count stood waiting for her. What she told him we never knew,—something satisfactory, no doubt, as he was driving with her that afternoon, and in the evening we saw him by her side at the gaming table in the Casino. But we didn’t disturb or go near her. Early the next morning piles of baggage left the Grand Villa, and we were up in time to see Madame’s black bonnet disappearing through the shrubbery as she went down to the station.
“Good riddance to her. I don’t believe in her, for all of her tears and fine words. Not speak English indeed!” came from Norah as she watched her.
Norah had stopped for awhile in Dresden where she had some relatives, and among them a cousin employed in a hotel where Jane Du Bois was also an employee. This girl, who could speak English, was very friendly with Norah, and when she heard she was from America made many inquiries about the country to which she had some thought of emigrating, and where, she said, she once had some relatives,—Smiths,—who lived in —— Vermont. Did Norah know them?
“I knew a Julina Smith from that place years ago,” Norah replied, whereupon it came out that Julina and Jane were second cousins, but had never met.
Jane had heard, though, of Julina’s fine marriage with Monsieur Felix of Passy, and that she was now a grand lady, ignoring the few relatives she had left and living in great splendor until her husband died. Where she was now, Jane neither knew nor cared. Norah, too, was quite indifferent to the whereabouts of her former associate and never dreamed of finding her at Monte Carlo. She had met Jack on the piazza as he was returning for my fan, and the two were talking together when Madame passed on her way to the Casino. She was a woman to be noticed anywhere and Norah looked curiously and rather admiringly at her as she drew near. In Jack’s mind there had always been a strong suspicion as to Madame’s identity. Surely he had seen her before, and if so Norah might help him to solve the mystery. He was not, however, prepared for what followed when to her question “Who is that lady coming?” he replied “Madame Julie Felix. Do you know her?”
Madame was close to them and the moonlight shone full on her face and eyes, which flashed for a moment on Norah and were quickly withdrawn.