Page:Braddon--The Trail of the Serpent.djvu/246

242 What does she think of in this dreary room? What can she think of? What has she ever thought for eight years past but of the man she loved and murdered? And he was innocent! As long as she had been convinced of his guilt, of his cruel and bitter treachery, it had been a sacrifice, that ordeal of the November night. Now it took another colour; it was a murder—and she a pitiful puppet in the hands of a master-fiend!

Monsieur Blurosset enters the room, and finds her alone with these thoughts.

"Madame," he says, "I have perhaps the honour of knowing you?" He has so many fair visitors that he thinks this one, whose face he cannot see, may be one of his old clients.

"It is eight years since you have seen me, monsieur," she replies. "You have most likely forgotten me?"

"Forgotten you, madame, perhaps, but not your voice. That is not to be forgotten."

"Indeed, monsieur—and why not?"

"Because, madame, it has a peculiarity of its own, which, as a physiologist, I cannot mistake. It is the voice of one who has suffered?"

"It is!—it is!"

"Of one who has suffered more than it is the common lot of woman to suffer."

"You are right, monsieur."

"And now, madame, what can I do for you?"

"Nothing, monsieur. You can do nothing for me but that which the commonest apothecary in this city who will sell me an ounce of laudanum can do as well as you."

"Oh, has it come to that again?" he says, with a shade of sarcasm in his tone. "I remember, eight years ago"

"I asked you for the means of death. I did not say I wished to die then, at that moment. I did not. I had a purpose in life. I have still."

As she said these words the fellow-lodger of Blurosset—the Indian soldier, Captain Lansdown, who had let himself in with his latch-key—crossed the hall, and was arrested at the half-open door of the study by the sound of voices within. I don't know how to account for conduct so unworthy of an officer and a gentleman, but the captain stopped in the shadow of the dark hall and listened—as if life and death were on the words—to the voice of the speaker.

"I have, I say, still a purpose in life—a solemn and a sacred one—to protect the innocent. However guilty I may be, thank Heaven I have still the power to protect my son."

"You are married, madame?"

"I am married. You know it as well as I, Monsieur Laurent Blurosset. The man who first brought me to your apartment