of that sneaking Yankee. I hate him! What did he have to do with her that he should break off the match? Do you say Remond has killed him?"
She had poured it all out in voluble French, protestingly, and with an air of the completest innocence, but she met only a furious frown.
"Madame, your airs of innocence are quite thrown away," he replied. "Your treachery is known. You would have sold that poor girl to a life that was worse than death. Your bargain in the garden was overheard," sternly. "Do you know what you have brought upon your head, traitress? Social ostracism and complete disgrace! The Jockey Club that has upheld you by its notice so many years, will desert you in a body. We can not horsewhip you as we shall Remond, but we shall hold you up to the scorn of the world."
"Mercy, monsieur!" she gasped, faintly, dropped her face in her hands, and dissolved in tears.
He had expected that she would scorn him, defy him, but this softer mood confounded him. He could not bear a woman's tears.
He sat and watched her in silence a few minutes, fidgeting restlessly, then said, curtly:
"Come, come, it is too late for tears unless they are tears of repentance for your sin."
Madame flung up her hands with a tragic gesture.
"Mon Dieu, how cruelly I have been misunderstood! I do not deny the plot in the garden, but the listener surely did not hear all. Remond was to marry the girl, I swear it! Poor little motherless lamb! do you think I would have allowed any one to harm a hair of her head? Oh, you wrong me bitterly! You have been deceived, misled."
She flung herself with sudden, inimitable grace on her knees at his feet.
"Carmontelle, you should know me better than this!" she cried. "I swear to you it was only a harmless plot to make her Remond's wife. It would have been better for her to have a home and protector, I—I am so poor," weeping, "I have lost so heavily at play that there is a mortgage on my home, and I could not keep the girl much longer; I must retrench my expenses. Yet only for this I am to be ostracised, disgraced, held up to the scorn of my friends. Ah, you are cruel, unjust to me. Oh, spare me, spare me! Say nothing until you can prove these charges true."
What a consummate actress! what a clever liar she was! Doubt began to invade his mind. Had Van Zandt misunderstood her words?
"Madame Lorraine," he said, sternly, "get up from the floor and listen to me. I will give you the benefit of a doubt. I will try to believe that your infamous plot went no further than the trying to force that helpless child into a hated union. Even that was infamy enough. Talk not to me of your French marriages. I despise them. But I will say nothing to the world—yet. I will not wrong you until I make sure."
"Bless you, noble Carmontelle!" she cried, seizing his hand and pressing passionate kisses upon it. He drew it coldly away, and said, dryly:
"If you really feel grateful for my clemency, tell me what you know about Van Zandt and Remond. I can not find either one, and I fear that something terrible has happened to the noble young Bostonian."
She swore by all the saints that she knew nothing, had heard nothing since the pistol-shot last night.
"I was so frightened I did not wait to see who was shot. I just ran in and went to bed. I did not want to be a witness of anything so terrible!" she shuddered.
"You swear you are not deceiving me, madame?" sternly.
"I swear by all the saints," fervently.
"Then I must search farther for my missing friend," he said, sadly, as he turned to go.
She caught his arm eagerly.
"Now tell me what you have done with the little baggage who has caused all this trouble? By Heaven, Carmontelle, if harm come to my little daughter through you, I will hold you to account!"
"Daughter!" he echoed, bewilderly, and she answered, dauntlessly:
"Yes, my daughter. The secret is out at last, the secret of my shame! She was born before I met Lorraine. Her father was—well, no matter who, since he was a villain. Well, I put the child out to nurse, and made an honest marriage. Then the woman followed me with the child, and I had to invent a story to account for her to Lorraine. Now I am free to claim her, and you see that the law will support me in demanding her restoration to my care!"
They stood looking at each other silently a moment, then Carmontelle answered, angrily:
"Madame, I do not believe you. This is only one of a dozen different stories you have told to account for the possession of that child. Your last claim is made in order to support a claim for her return to you. The pretext will not avail you. The little ma'amselle is in safe hands, where she shall remain until she is trained and educated up to the standard necessary for my wife."
"Your wife?" she gasped, white with jealous fury.
"I have said it," he answered, coldly, and strode abruptly from the house.
Mme. Lorraine fell down for a moment on the sofa in furious hysterics. Carmontelle, her princely adorer, had scorned, defied her; Van Zandt knew her guilt and despised her; worst of all, the little scapegoat of her tempers, her beautiful slave, the hated Little Nobody, had escaped her clutches. Furies!
But suddenly she sprung up like a wild creature, tore open the door that Carmontelle had slammed together, and rushed after him. He was just entering his carriage when her frantic hand arrested him and drew him forcibly back.
"Come into the house; I must speak with you further. Do not shake your head," wildly. "It is a matter of life and death!"
He suffered her to drag him back into the salon. She turned her shining eyes upon his face with a half-maniacal gleam in them.
"The girl—had she awakened when you saw her last?" hoarsely.
"No," he replied.
She smote her forehead fiercely with one ringed white hand.
"My soul! I do not want to have murder on my hands. You must find Remond. I gave him the little vial with the antidote."
"The antidote?" he stammered, almost stupidly.
"Yes, the antidote. She is under the influence of a strange drug. I bought the two vials long ago from an old hag in the East as a curiosity, you see. One drug was to bring sleep, the other to wake at will. Without—" she paused, and her voice broke.
"Without—" he echoed, hoarsely; and in a frightened, guilty voice, she muttered:
"The one, without the other means—death!"
"Fiend!" he hissed, fiercely.
"No, no; do not blame me. I meant no ill. I gave Remond the antidote, to be used when they reached the end of their journey. How could I know you would take the girl from him and hide her? How could I know he would disappear? Find Remond quickly, or her death will lie at your door."
"You speak the truth?" he cried, wildly.
"Before God and the angels, monsieur!"
With a smothered oath he thrust her from him and rushed out again, leaped into the carriage, and gave his orders:
"Like the wind, to the detective agency."
It was two miles distant, and the panting horses were covered with foam when they set him down at his destination. Fortunately the familiar face of the most skillful detective in New Orleans looked at him in surprise from the pavement. He beckoned him into the vehicle.
In words as brief and comprehensive as possible he explained what he wanted done. He must find Remond at once—find him and bring him to the Convent of Le Bon Berger.
"A life hangs on his hands," he said, feverishly. "Tell him not to fail to bring with him the antidote he received last night."
"I will find him if he is in the city," the detective promised, ardently; and full of zeal, inspired not only by love for his profession, but genuine anxiety and grief over the startling case just confided to him, he sprung from the carriage to set about his task.
And Carmontelle, with his mind full of Little Nobody, gave the order again:
"To