“‘Where there is a will there is a way,’” Mrs. de Vere replied, sagely.
“Let me think,” said Mlle. Finette.
She stood so long with down-dropped eyes that Mrs. de Vere cried impatiently:
“I will make it two hundred if you will consent, Finette, and I will always be grateful to you for helping me to outwit these tyrants who have tried to impose upon me with their infamous plot.”
Finette smiled.
“I will try,” she said.
Mrs. de Vere showered praises upon her confederate, and then Finette bent down, whispering a question that made her mistress recoil with blanched cheeks.
“Ah, no, no! not that!” she cried, with a horrified gesture of her white hand. “Only let me be rid of her—that is all I ask.”
“Very well, madame—as you wish it, of course. I think I know the woman that will do what you want—a wretched old miser of a rag-picker. But she lives a long way from here. If I might have your saddle-horse—”
“You are welcome to it.”