“Mariette Lepage.”
Instantly her face went pale as death.
“Mariette Lepage!” she gasped hoarsely.
“Yes. The woman whose strange letter was found upon Nelly after her death,” he answered. “What my father could have known of her I am utterly at a loss to imagine.”
“And she is actually here, in Nice,” she whispered in a strange, terrified voice, for in an instant there had arisen before her vision the dark angry eyes of the woman in mask and domino who had pelted her so unmercifully on that Sunday afternoon during Carnival.
“Yes, she is here,” he said, glancing at her sharply. “She was evidently well acquainted with poor Nelly. What do you know of her?”
“I—I know nothing,” she answered in an intense, anxious tone, as one consumed by some terrible dread. “Mariette Lepage is not my friend.”
And she sat panting, her chin sunk upon her breast as if she had been dealt a blow.