Page:The Mystery of the Blue Train.pdf/62

46 The dancer’s eyes widened to slits.

“I think she will, my friend. She is one of those who would not like the publicity. There are one or two pretty stories that she would not like her friends to read in the newspapers.”

“What do you mean?" asked Kettering sharply.

Mirelle laughed, her head thrown back.

“Parbleu! I mean the gentleman who calls himself the Comte de la Roche. I know all about him. I am Parisienne, you remember. He was her lover before she married you, was he not?”

Kettering took her sharply by the shoulders.

“That is a damned lie,” he said, “and please remember that, after all, you are speaking of my wife.”

Mirelle was a little sobered.

“You are extraordinary, you English,” she complained. “All the same, I dare say that you may be right. The Americans are so cold, are they not? But you will permit me to say, mon ami, that she was in love with him before she married you, and her father stepped in and sent the Comte about his business. And the little Mademoiselle, she wept many tears! But she obeyed. Still, you must know as well as I do, Dereek, that it is a very different story now. She sees him nearly every day, and on the fourteenth she goes to Paris to meet him.”

“How do you know all this?” demanded Kettering.

“Me? I have friends in Paris, my dear Dereek, who know the Comte intimately. It is all arranged. She is going to the Riviera, so she says, but in reality the Comte meets her in Paris andwho knows! Yes, yes, you can take my word for it, it is all arranged."