“It was not for losing the diamonds that her heart was sore—­poor silly child!”

And, inasmuch as I doubted whether my venerable friend thought that it was for the loss of her husband either, I held my peace.

CHAPTER XXII.

From Shadow to Sunshine.

There remains yet one strange and terrible episode of which I must tell, though indeed, I thank God, I was in no way a witness of it.  A week after the events which I have set down, while Marie still lay prostrate at the convent, and I abode at my old hotel in Avranches, assisting to the best of my power in the inquiry being held by the local magistrate, an officer of police arrived from Havre; and when the magistrate had heard his story, he summoned me from the ante-room where I was waiting, and bade me also listen to the story.  And this it was: 

At the office where tickets were taken for a ship on the point to make the voyage to America, among all the crowd about to cross, it chanced that two people met one another—­an elderly woman whose face was covered by a thick veil, and a short spare man who wore a fair wig and large red whiskers.  Yet, notwithstanding these disguises, the pair knew one another.  For at first sight of the woman, the man cowered away and tried to hide himself; while she, perceiving him, gave a sudden scream and clutched eagerly at the pocket of her dress.

Seeing himself feared, the ruffian took courage, his quick brain telling him that the woman also was seeking to avoid recognition.  And when she had taken her ticket, he contrived to see the book and, finding a name which he did not know as hers, he tracked her to the inn where she was lodging till the vessel should start.  When he walked into the inn, she shrank before him and turned pale—­for he caught her with the veil off her face—­and again she clutched at her pocket.  He sat down near her:  for a while she sat still; then she rose and walked out into the air, as though she went for a walk.  But he, suspecting rightly that she would not return, tracked her again to another inn, meaner and more obscure than the first, and, walking in, he sat down by her.  And again the third time this was done:  and there were people who had been at each of the inns to speak to it:  and those at the third inn said that the woman looked as though Satan himself had taken his place by her—­so full of helplessness and horror was she; while the man smiled under alert bright eyes that would not leave her face, except now and again for a swift watchful glance round the room.  For he was now hunter and hunted both; yet, like a dog that will be slain rather than loose his hold, he chose to risk his own life, if by that he might not lose sight of the unhappy woman.  Two lives had been spent already in the quest:  a third was nought to him; and the woman’s air and clutching of her pocket had set an idea afloat in his brain.  The vessel was to sail at six the next morning; and