“Dear M. Rambert!” murmured Thérèse, much moved: “do that; speak to Lady Beltham about me; I should be so glad!”
Thérèse did not finish all she would have said. A loud ring at the front door bell broke in upon her words, and Etienne Rambert rose and walked across the room.
“That must be the good Baronne de Vibray come for you,” he said.
XIV
Mademoiselle Jeanne
After she had so roughly disposed of the enterprising Henri Verbier, whose most unseemly advances had so greatly scandalised her, Mlle. Jeanne took to her heels, directly she was out of sight of the Royal Palace Hotel, and ran like one possessed. She stood for a moment in the brilliantly lighted, traffic-crowded Avenue Wagram, shaking with excitement and with palpitating heart, and then mechanically hailed a passing cab and told the driver to take her towards the Bois. There she gave another heedless order to go to the boulevard Saint-Denis, but as the cab approached the place de l’Etoile she realised that she was once more near the Royal Palace Hotel, and stopping the driver by the tram lines she dismissed him and got into a tram that was going to the station of Auteuil. It was just half-past eleven when she reached the station.
“When is the next train for Saint-Lazaire?” she asked.
She learned that one was starting almost at once, and hurriedly taking a second-class ticket she jumped into a ladies’ carriage and went as far as Courcelles. There she alighted, went out of the station, looked around her for a minute or two to get her bearings, and then walked slowly towards the rue Eugène-Flachat. She hesitated a second, and then walked firmly towards a particular house, and rang the bell.
“A lady to see you, sir,” the footman said to M. Rambert.
“Bring her in here at once,” said M. Rambert, supposing that the man had kept the Baronne de Vibray waiting in the anteroom.
The drawing-room door was opened a little way, and someone came in and stepped quickly into the shadow by the door. Thérèse, who had risen to hurry towards the visitor, stopped short when she perceived that it was a stranger and not her guardian. Noticing her action, M. Etienne Rambert turned and looked at the person who had entered.
It was a lady.
“To what am I indebted—” he began with a bow; and then, having approached the visitor, he broke off short. “Good heavens—!”
The bell rang a second time, and on this occasion the Baronne de Vibray hurried into the room, a radiant incarnation of gaiety.
“I am most dreadfully late!” she exclaimed, and was hurrying towards M. Etienne Rambert with outstretched hands, full of some amusing story she had to tell him, when she too caught sight of the strange lady standing stiffly in the corner of the room, with downcast eyes.
Etienne Rambert repressed his first emotion, smiled to the Baronne, and then went towards the mysterious lady.
“Madame,” he said, not a muscle of his face moving, “may I trouble you to come into my study?”
“Who is that lady, M. Rambert?” said Thérèse when presently M. Rambert came back into the drawing-room. “And how white you are!”
M. Rambert forced a smile.
“I am rather tired, dear. I have had a great deal to do these last few days.”
The Baronne de Vibray was full of instant apologies.
“It is all my fault,” she exclaimed. “I am dreadfully sorry to have kept you up so late,” and in a few minutes more the Baronne’s car was speeding towards the rue Boissy-d’Anglais.
M. Rambert hurried back to his study, shut and locked the door behind him, and almost sprang towards the unknown lady, his fists clenched, his eyes starting out of his head.
“Charles!” he exclaimed.
“Papa!” the girl replied, and sank upon a sofa.
There was silence. Etienne Rambert seemed utterly dumbfounded.
“I won’t, I won’t remain disguised as a woman any longer. I’ve done with it. I cannot bear it!” the strange creature murmured.
“You must!” said Rambert harshly, imperiously. “I insist!”
The pseudo Mlle. Jeanne slowly took off the heavy wig that concealed her real features, and tore away the corsage that compressed her bosom, revealing the strong and muscular frame of a young man.
“No, I will not,” replied the strange individual, to whom M. Rambert had not hesitated to give the name of Charles. “I would rather anything else happened.”
“You have got to expiate,” Etienne Rambert said with the same harshness.
“The expiation is too great,” the young fellow answered. “The torture is unendurable.”
“Charles,” said M. Rambert very gravely, “do you forget that legally, civilly, you are dead?”
“I would a thousand times rather be really dead!” the unhappy lad exclaimed.
“Alas!” his father murmured, speaking very fast, “I thought your mind was more unhinged than it really is. I saved your life, regardless of all risk, because I thought you were insane, and now I know you are a criminal! Oh, yes, I know things, I know your life!”
“Father,” said Charles Rambert with so stern and determined an expression that Etienne Rambert felt a moment’s fear. “I want to know first of all how you managed to save my life and make out that I was dead. Was that just chance, or was it planned deliberately?”
Confronted with this new firmness of his son’s, Etienne Rambert dropped his peremptory tone; his shoulders drooped
