Page:Braddon--The Trail of the Serpent.djvu/237

Rh making her comprehend all this, the old woman's speech is very obscure, and calculated to try the patience of a more amiable man than the Count de Marolles.

"Yes, it was a golden secret—a golden secret, eh, my dear? It was something to have a marquis for a son-in-law, wasn't it, my dear, eh?" mumbled the dying old hag.

"A marquis for a son-in-law! What does the jibbering old idiot mean?" muttered Raymond, whose reverence for his grandmother was not one of the strongest points in his composition. "A marquis! I dare say my respected progenitor kept a public-house, or something of that sort. A marquis! The 'Marquis of Granby,' most likely!"

"Yes, a marquis," continued the old woman, "eh, dear! And he married your mother—married her at the parish church, one cold dark November morning; and I've got the c'tificate. Yes," she mumbled, in answer to Raymond's eager gesture, "I've got it; but I'm not going to tell you where;—no, not till I'm paid. I must be paid for that secret in gold—yes, in gold. They say that we don't rest any easier in our coffins for the money that's buried with us; but I should like to lie up to neck in golden sovereigns new from the Mint, and not one light one amongst 'em."

"Well," said Raymond, impatiently, "your secret! I'm rich, and can pay for it. Your secret—quick!"

"Well, he hadn't been married to her long before a change came, in his native country, over the sea yonder," said the old woman, pointing in the direction of St. Martin's Lane, as if she thought the British Channel flowed somewhere behind that thoroughfare. "A change came, and he got his rights again. One king was put down and another king was set up, and everybody else was massacred in the streets; it was—a—I don't know what they call it; but they're always a-doin' it. So he got his rights, and he was a rich man again, and a great man; and then his first thought was to keep his marriage with my girl a secret. All very well, you know, my girl for a wife while he was giving lessons at a shilling a-piece, in Parlez-vous Français, and all that; but now he was a marquis, and it was quite another thing."

Raymond by this time gets quite interested; so does the boy in the big coat and the slouched hat, who has transferred the field of his gambling operations in the marble line to the landing outside the garret door.

"He wanted the secret kept, and I kept it for gold. I kept it even from her, your mother, my own ill-used girl, for gold. She never knew who he was; she thought he'd deserted her, and she took to drinking; she and I threw you into the river when we were mad drunk, and couldn't stand your squalling.