she should be silent; if she knew nothing-as he thought most likely-so, also, it was best.
But, still, he meant to know himself, if possible, something about the child's origin. He, at least, was under no promised bond of secrecy and silence; he had never been confided in. For, to know everything was, he felt certain, to see a comfortable future unroll itself before him; a future free from all money troubles-the only discomfort which he could imagine was serious in this world. The person who had sent that bag of louis'-the woman had said it contained gold! – he repeated to himself, could doubtless provide many more. He must know who that person was.
With still an easy grace which seemed to be the remnant of a higher life than that in which he now existed, he held the door open for his visitor to pass out; with equally easy politeness he followed her down the ricketty stairs and would have escorted her to the end of the court, or alley, and afterwards, unknown to her, have followed the simple creature to whatever portion of Paris she might have gone, never losing sight of his quarry, but that, at the threshold, she stopped suddenly and bade him come no farther.
"It must not be," she said. "Monsieur Jasmin, return. And-forget not your duty to the child."
For a moment he paused dumfoundered, perceiving that this simpleton was, in sober truth, no such fool as he had supposed her. Then he bowed, wished her good day, promising all required of him as he did so, and retired back into the passage of the house. Nor could any glance thrown through the crack of the open door aid him farther. He saw her pause at the entrance to the court, and, standing still, look back for some minutes or so, as though desirous of observing if he was following her; also, he saw her glance directed to the window of his room above, as though seeking to discover if he was glancing out of it; if he had rushed up there to spy upon her.
Then, a moment later, she was gone from out the entrance to the court. And, creeping swiftly now to that entrance, and straining his eyes up and down the long street, he observed that no sign of the woman was visible.
He had lost all trace of her.
Amidst the hackney coaches and the hucksters' carts, and, sometimes, a passing carriage of the nobility from the neighbouring Quartier St. Germain, she had disappeared, leaving no sign behind.
CHAPTER V
THE DUKE'S DESIRE
Vandecque never discovered who that woman was, whence she came, nor where she vanished to. Never, though he brought to bear upon the quest which he instituted for her an amount of intelligent search that his long training in all kinds of cunning had well fitted him to put in action. He watched for days, nay, weeks, in the neighbourhood of the Hospital of Mercy, to or from which most of the Sisters, who were not engaged in nursing or other acts of charity elsewhere, passed regularly-yet never, amongst some scores of them who met his eyes, could he discover the woman he sought. He questioned, too, those in the court who had been dwelling there when first his wife came to occupy the garret in which he had found her later, as to whether they could remember aught of the arrival of the child. He asked questions that produced nothing satisfactory, since all testified to the truth of that which the poor woman had so often told him-namely, that the child was brought to her before she came to this spot. Indeed, he would have questioned Laure herself as to what she could remember concerning her earliest years, only what use was it to ask questions of one who had been but an infant, unable even to talk, at the time the event happened.
At last-and after being confronted for months by nothing but a dense blackness of oblivion which he could not penetrate-he decided that the woman who had appeared to him as a simple and unsophisticated religieuse, capable only of blindly and faithfully carrying out the orders given to her by another person, was, in truth, no Sister of Charity whatever, but a scheming person who had temporarily assumed the garb she wore as a disguise. He came also to believe that she herself was Laure's mother, that she had bound herself in some way to make the payment which he had by such extreme good fortune become the recipient of, and that, in one thing at least, she had uttered the actual truth-the actual truth when she had said that those louis' would be the last forthcoming, that there could never be any more. Had she not, he recalled to mind, said that such a sum as she brought was not easily come by, as an excuse for her not having paid them before? Also, had she not wept a little over the child, folded her to her bosom, and called her "Poor little thing"? Did not both these things most probably point to the fact that, judged by the latter actions, she was the girl's mother, and, according to the statement which preceded it, that she was not a woman of extraordinarily large means? Had she been so, she would have been both able and willing to pay down more than five hundred louis' for the hiding of her secret, and would, to have that secret kept always safely (and also to possess the power of seeing the child now and again without fear of detection) have been prepared to make fresh payments from time to time.
For five hundred louis' was what the canvas bag had contained. Five hundred louis', as Vandecque found when, on returning to the garret after losing sight of the woman at the entrance to the court, he had turned them all out on to the table. Five hundred louis' exactly, neither more nor less, proving that the sum was a carefully counted one; doubtless, too, one duly arranged for. Louis' that were of all kinds, and of the reigns during which they had been in existence-the original ones of Louis the Just; the more imposing ones of Le Roi Soleil, with the great sun blazing on the reverse side; the bright, new ones but recently struck for the present boy-king by order of the Regent; all of which led the astute Vandecque to conclude that the pile had been long accumulating-that the first batch might be an old nest egg, or an inheritance; that the second batch was made up of savings added gradually; that the third had been got together by hook or by crook, with a determination to complete the full sum.
"Yet, what matters!" he said, to himself, as he tossed the gold pieces about in his eager hands, and gloated over them with his greedy eyes; tossing, too, a double louis d'or of the treacherous Le Juste, which he had come across, to the child to play with-"what matters where they come from, how they were gathered together to hide a woman's shame? They are mine now! Mine! Mine! Mine! A capital! A bank! The foundation of a fortune, carefully handled! Come, child; come, Laure; come with me. To the fournisseur's, first; then to the dining rooms. Some new, clean clothes for both of us, and then a meal to make our hearts dance within us. We are rich, my child; rich, my little one. Rich! Rich! Rich!"
For, to the whilom beggared outcast and galley slave, five hundred louis' were wealth.
Time passed; in truth it seemed that Vandecque was indeed rich, or growing rich. The garret was left behind; four rooms in the Rue du Paon preceded by a year or so that apartment in the Passage du Commerce at which he eventually arrived. Four rooms, one a dining-room, another a parlour, in which at midnight there came sometimes a score of men to gamble-women sometimes came too-and a bedroom for each. He was growing well-to-do, his capital accumulating as capital will accumulate in the hands of the man who always holds the bank and makes it a stipulation that, on those terms alone, can people gamble beneath his roof.
Meanwhile Laure was fast developing into a woman-was one almost. She was now seventeen, for she was within a year of the time when the exile, Walter Clarges, was to whisper the words of suggested salvation in her ear in the saloon of the demoiselles Montjoie-suggested salvation from her marriage with Monsieur le Duc Desparre, from his embraces. A beautiful girl, too, with her sweet hair bound up now about her shapely head, her deep hazel eyes full and lustrous, calm and pure. Una herself passed no more undefiled amidst the horrors of Wandering Wood than did Laure Vauxcelles amidst the gamblers and the dissolute roués who surrounded the court of Philippe le Débonnaire, and who, ere the games began at night-when occasionally permitted to see her-found time to cast admiring glances at her wondrous, fast-budding beauty.
The name Vauxcelles was, of course, no more hers than was that of Laure, which had been given to her by poor Madame Vandecque when first she took the deserted and discarded waif to her kindly heart. But as Vandecque had elected to style her his niece, so, too, he decided to give
