Page:My Secret Life Vol 2.djvu/27

MY SECRET LIFE close by, I never knew. She said she was sorry she had brought the girl to London. Louise was not to know that I was aware of her departure. The last words she said to me were, “I suppose when you have her you will leave me.” I replied I had no such intention, nor had I; but a gay woman is a good judge of the future.

I must now describe the lodgings more closely. The ground-floor was occupied by a cloth merchant; there was no shop, but in the windows were some bales of cloth, a brass name-plate was on the inner door, the top of the house was the cloth-dealer’s store. The man was rarely in England, the entrance to the shop from the hall was always locked, and I never saw more than one man enter it.

The first floor Camille had. On the second floor was a grumpy old woman named Boileau; she took charge of the house. I scarcely ever saw the old woman excepting when she opened the door, and then she neither spoke or looked at me. Until Louise came, Camille had had a French servant. Some years afterwards it turned out that the woolen shop was used by the foreigners for forging foreign notes; the cloth business was but a mask. Camille had been there two years.

Off Camille went. That same day I was at the house. Madame, Louise said, had gone for ten days into the country, and had left word that no one was to be let in. I went upstairs saying I should come when I liked, that as Camille had gone, we could do as we liked. She looked hard at me.

“I expect Madame has gone off with some man,” said I, “she will get a good lot of fucking.” She had heard me talking baudy, and knew that word in —22—