“Hugh Willard!” she cried. “You betray yourself, Mr Porter! How do you know his Christian name? Tell me that!”
“Because you have just mentioned it,” replied the man, not in the least perturbed.
“I certainly have not!” she declared, while Madame Nicole, not understanding English, stood aside trying to gather the drift of the conversation.
The man’s assertion that his name was Crowe, and that he was a doctor when she had recognised him as an intimate friend of the woman who had blackmailed her lover, aroused the girl’s anger and indignation. Why was he there in Bayeux?
“I tell you that you are Arthur Porter, the friend of Gordon Gray and his unscrupulous circle of friends!” cried the girl, who, turning to the stout Frenchwoman, went on in French: “This man is an impostor! He calls himself a doctor, yet I recognise him as a man named Porter, the friend of the woman who victimised the man I loved! Do not believe him?”
“Madame!” exclaimed the visitor with a benign smile, as he bowed slightly. “I think we can dismiss all these dramatic allegations made by poor mademoiselle—can we not? Your own observations have,” he said, speaking in French, “shown you the abnormal state of the young lady’s mind. She is, I understand, prone to imagining tragic events, and making statements that are quite unfounded. For that reason Mr Ford asked me to call and see her, because—to be frank—I am a specialist on mental diseases.”
“Ah! Doctor! I fear that mademoiselle’s mind is much unbalanced by her poor father’s death,” said the woman. “Monsieur Ford explained it all to me, and urged me to take no notice of her wild statements. When is Mr Ford returning to France?”
“In about three months, I believe. Then he will no doubt relieve you of your charge—which, I fear, must be a heavy one.”
“Sometimes, yes. But mademoiselle has never been so talkative and vehement as she is to-day.”
“Because I, perhaps, bear some slight resemblance to some man she once knew—the man named Porter, I suppose.”