Madeline approached him, questioningly.
‘Monsieur?’
He turned with an exclamation—she recoiled. The eyes looking so steadily into hers belonged to a face which she remembered well. She was face to lace with the young Englishman whom she had met on the night of her elopement from school.
CHAPTER XVI.—‘WHICH DO YOU PITY?’
Dismayed at the unexpected encounter, Madeline gazed at the Englishman for a time in speechless confusion; then she turned her head and gazed helplessly around.
‘Mademoiselle,’ said the young man, quietly, ‘I fear you are not prepared for this meeting with me. Well, let me tell you I am here on an errand of duty, not pleasure. My friend, the Marquis de Vaux, has placed this affair entirely in my hands—————-’
‘Oh, Monsieur!’
‘Pray do not interrupt me, Mademoiselle. I have little to say, so our interview can be brief—it will be better for us both. I had the pleasure of meeting you once before—only once, when I offered you my assistance, because I feared you needed some one to pluck you from the clutches of that Frenchman, in whose company you were staying at the hotel. But when I offered you my help I thought you were some pure-minded, misguided English girl. I did not know that you were the mistress of a scoundrel, and that you were making your way to Paris to become the decoy for a gambling hell.’