"I again repeat you are deceived. Release me from these fetters and cords, give me but a chance of at least selling my life as dearly as I can, and the money you told me you stood in need of shall be yours."
"Hark!" she exclaimed. "They are coming!"
"Bring down a couple of bottles of wine," said Levasseur, from the bottom of the stairs. Madame Jaubert obeyed the order and in a few minutes returned.
I renewed my supplications to be released, and was of course extremely liberal of promises.
"It is vain talking," said the woman. "I do not believe they will harm you; but even if it were as you say, it is too late now to retrace my steps. You can not escape. That fool below is already three parts intoxicated: they are both armed, and would hesitate at nothing if they but suspected treachery."
It was vain to urge her. She grew sullen and menacing; and was insisting that the gag should be replaced in my mouth, when a thought struck me.
"Levasseur called you Marie Duquesne just now; but surely your name is Jaubert—is it not?"
"Do not trouble yourself about my name," she replied; "that is my affair, not yours."
"Because if you are the Marie Duquesne who once kept a shop in Cranbourne-alley, and lost a child called Marie-Louise, I could tell you something."
A wild light broke from her dark eyes, and a suppressed scream from her lips. "I am that Marie Duquesne!" she said, in a voice tremulous with emotion.