Page:The Old Countess (1927).pdf/249

 ham felt himself suddenly retreat, as if from a dimly seen tentacle stretched forth towards him. 'In what way does Mademoiselle Ludérac's story concern me?' he coldly questioned.

'It concerns you in that it concerns your Jill,' said Madame de Lamouderie and her eyes lifted themselves for a moment and rested upon him. 'Some intimacies it is not suitable that she should be exposed to. She is singularly young; singularly confiding and inexperienced. Marthe would never tell her; nor could I; but to you I feel that I owe a complete avowal, since it is through me that your wife met my protégée.—You will do me the justice to remember that it was never as other than a performer for our entertainment that I introduced her.'

Graham now leaned back and locked his hands behind his head and looked heavily across at the old lady, and after a pause she took up her theme with the deliberate gravity that had, throughout, marked her manner.

'You know now all that need be known of my poor Marthe's lamentable girlhood. Her youth, the flower of her age, was spent in caring for a demented mother. She had no guidance; no protection; no instruction. Her family were free-thinkers; atheists;—religion meant nothing in their lives. They had none of the standards, none of the prejudices, even, of the upper classes. When Marthe's mother died, she went to Bordeaux to seek for work. She was not known there. It would have been impossible for her to re-