Page:Once a Week Dec 1860 to June 61.pdf/240

 . 23, 1861.] delivered the note. Was Mrs. Urquhart’s headache better?”

“I did not hear of it, Madame. She seemed cheerful enough with master, laughing at his rough hair, and what not.”

“O, I am glad of that. Perhaps you had better not wait any longer, Mary.”

“You would be offended with me if I was to say something, Madame, and yet I should like to say it.”

“I do not take offence, Mary, where it is not intended. No one should do so.”

“Far be it from me to mean offending, Madame. But it is a bold thing in me, and I think I am always saying bold things. Only this, Madame. I do not know how ladies feel when one lady, who does not deserve it, is made the scapegoat for another who does, but I know how I should feel if the other one did nothing to set me right with other folks. But my feelings are nothing, and I beg pardon for speaking of them. Only this, Madame, that, mistress or no mistress, you may rely upon me to the end of the world, and letters to the house might not be safe but sent to me to the care of M. Silvain would be always delivered instantly or I would know the reason why. Good day, Madame I’m sure.”

All the latter part of this speech was delivered with great rapidity, and yet with nervousness, the speaker fearing to be interrupted before she had done. And when she had concluded she hastened away, and then, at the distance of some yards, made, in shame and with much elaboration, the curtsey with which she had intended to finish.

“Servants overhear. One sells the secret to my enemy. The other offers me her friendship and assistance. A fit ending to a day like this,” thought Laura, bitterly, as she crunched up her sister’s note.

M. Silvain was in his neat little shop when Mrs. Lygon entered it, and great was the delight of the former at beholding the English lady. But with the tact of his class in France, he abstained from any excess of demonstration, and it was only by the sparkle of his eye that his pleasure at being thus visited could have been detected.

“You are very well acquainted with Versailles, M. Silvain?”

M. Silvain had had the honour of being born in Paris, but his parents had removed to Versailles, when he was six years old, and since then it had been his home. Could his perfect acquaintance with every nook and corner in the place be of the slightest use to madame?

“I wish to remain here for a short time—how long I cannot exactly say at present—but I do not wish to go to an hotel. Do you know of a respectable lodging where—”

Might M. Silvain interrupt? It might be less trouble to madame to assent to his supposition, to correct him if wrong, than to speak. Madame desired a perfectly confortable lodging, in entire seclusion and privacy, where the persons would be more than content with the honour of entertaining madame, would ask for no other name than that which she pleased to give, and whoever might inquire for any other name would obtain no information. He had been so fortunate as to describe what madame wanted? In that case, if madame would allow him one half hour, such a place should then be ready, and she would have but to take the trouble to walk to it.

And Silvain was as good as his word, and in another hour Mrs. Lygon had taken possession of an apartment in a pleasant white house, some distance from the avenue, and in a somewhat retired situation. A few hasty purchases, and a few general directions to the clean, withered-apple faced old lady, to whom the place appertained, and Mrs. Lygon had nothing to think of but her life’s one business, and the many sorrows arising to her therefrom. With such thoughts for her companions, let us leave her for awhile.

“ Paris agent has made his inquiries,” said Charles Hawkesley, hastily entering his wife’s room on returning home.

“Well, and has news?” said Beatrice, starting up.

“Yes, indeed, if it may be depended on, and he is a man of business. He sent out, of course privately, to Versailles, and ascertained that somebody, who certainly answers the description of Arthur, had been at Robert’s, and had left in the middle of the night.”

“And Laura?”

“He was informed that no such person had been there. But it seems that the man who was sent was of a shrewd character, and though he does not send this message as part of his official answer, he has reason to think that a lady, not one of the regular inmates of the house, is staying there, and that she is English.”

“How did he know, dear?”

“That, of course, he does not explain. I consider that we had a right to make the inquiry in the way we did, because it might have caused alarm, had we applied direct to Bertha, under the circumstances, but I take it that the messenger has used other means to find out the truth than I should have desired.”

“No matter, in a case like this. I hate meanness, but I would peep through a keyhole if I thought somebody inside the room was hurting any one I loved. Then you think that we may set our minds at rest so far?”

“I think that Arthur and Laura are in Paris, but as for setting our minds at rest, I fear that we are not much further advanced, dear.”

“Why not, if they are together at Bertha’s?”

“I do not gather that they are together. To tell you the truth, it looks very much as if one were in search of the other; and as we know that Laura left home before Arthur did—”

“You have told me all you have heard?”

“Every word. I hurried home to do so.”

“It is a great thing, Charles, to have ascertained that she is with Bertha.”

“It is something; but—”

“Nay, is it not an answer at once to all the wicked suggestions which we heard that people had dared to make? We wanted no assuring of her perfect innocence, dear soul; but it will lighten Price’s heart to be able to say that her mistress is with Mrs. Urquhart. I will write to her immediately.”