John Ayliffe's mother sank down in a seat, and hid her face with her hands.
CHAPTER XXXIII.
Marlow could not be hard-hearted with a woman, and he felt for the terrible state of agitation and alarm, to which John Ayliffe's mother was reduced.
"We must be gentle with her," he said in French to the Commissary of Police, who was with him, and whom we have hitherto called the man in black.
"Oui, monsieur," replied the other, taking a pinch of snuff, and perfectly indifferent whether he was gentle or not,—for the Commissary had the honor, as he termed it, of assisting at the breaking of several gentlemen on the wheel, to say nothing of sundry decapitations, hangings, and the question, ordinary and extraordinary, all of which have a certain tendency, when witnessed often, slightly to harden the human heart, so that he was not tender.
Marlow was approaching to speak to the unfortunate woman, when removing her hands from her eyes, she looked wildly round, exclaiming, "Oh! have you come to take me, have you come to take me?"
"That must depend upon circumstances, madam," replied Marlow, in a quiet tone. "I have obtained sufficient proofs of the conspiracy in which your son has been engaged with yourself and Mr. Shanks, the attorney, to justify me in applying to the Government of his most Christian Majesty for your apprehension and removal to England. But I am unwilling to deal at all harshly with you, if it can be avoided."
"Oh! pray don't, pray don't!" she exclaimed vehemently; "my son will kill me, I do believe, if he knew that you had found me out; for he has told me, and written to me so often to hide myself carefully, that he would think it was my fault."
"It is his own fault in ordering your letters to him to be sent to the Silver Cross at Hartwell," replied Marlow. "Every body in the house knew the handwriting, and became aware that you were not dead, as had been pretended. But your son will soon be in a situation to kill nobody; for the very fact of your being found here, with the other circumstances we know, is sufficient to convict him of perjury."
"Then he'll lose the property and the title, and not be Sir John any more," said the unhappy woman.