“Answer me,” said his companion, in a low, guttural voice. “Will you take the oath?”
He hesitated, remembering that she was his wife, the woman he trusted implicitly, and whom he still adored, believing her to be good and pure. Yet here was a chance to ascertain something about her past, the secret of which had been so strangely preserved by Egerton. The temptation proved too great. To humour an imbecile, he thought, was justifiable.
Turning to the dying man, he exclaimed suddenly—“I swear.”
The anxious wearied expression on the man’s face almost momentarily disappeared on obtaining a decisive answer from his comrade, and after a few moments’ silence he grew calmer, and his breathing became more easy.
In obedience to a motion from him, Hugh placed his ear closer, at the same time passing his arm gently under the sufferer’s head.
“A few years ago,” he said feebly, “three English students lived in Paris, on the first floor of a dingy old house in the Quai Montabello, facing Notre Dame. Their names were Holt, Glanville, and Egerton. They were—”
“Egerton! I have a friend of that name!”
“Yes, it was he! Like many other hare-brained denizens of the Quartier Latin, they frequently passed their evenings at the Bal Bullier. One night while dancing there, Egerton met a young and handsome woman. Her charms were irresistible, and he fell madly in love with her, young fool that he was! She was poor when these men first knew her, and, discovering that she was in the chorus at the Chatelet, they bestowed upon her the name of ‘La Petite Hirondelle.’ She was a clever woman, and not to be easily overtaken by adverse fortune. Indeed, hers had already been an adventurous career, and she had few scruples—”
“What was the woman’s name?” asked Hugh anxiously.
“She had many. But—I was telling you. The man with whom she lived was an expert thief, and she, a voleuse also, was his accomplice, being an adept at abstracting jewellery from counter-trays in shops she visited on pretence of making a purchase. The money upon which they had been living was the proceeds of an extensive plate robbery at a mansion at Asnières, which had been perpetrated by this man and a youthful assistant; the man you know as Adolphe Chavoix.”