“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 cannot 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.
“Then I have to inform you that the child so long supposed to be lost I discovered nearly three weeks ago.”