“Thanks, I have dined,” said M. Cambray.

The jailer placed the food on the table, with the words:  “I want you to understand, citizen, that if you have any idea of starving yourself to death, we shall pour the soup down your throat.”

Toward evening another visitor appeared.  The door was opened with loud clanking of chains and bolts, and a tall man crossed the threshold.  It was the Marquis de Fervlans.

His manner now was not so condescending and sympathetic.  He approached the prisoner, and said in a commanding tone that was evidently intended to be intimidating: 

“You have been betrayed, and may as well confess everything; it is the only thing that will save you.”

A scornful smile crossed the prisoner’s lips.  “That is the usual form of address to a criminal who has been arrested for burglary.”

The marquis laughed.

“I see, M. Cambray, that you are not the sort of person to be easily frightened.  It is useless to adopt the usual prison methods with you.  Very well; then we will try a different one.  It may be that we shall part quite good friends!  What do I say?  Part?  Say, rather, that we may continue together, hand in hand!  But to the point.  You have a friend who shared the same apartment with you.  This gentleman deserted you last night, I believe?”

“The ingrate!” ironically ejaculated M. Cambray.

“Beg pardon, but there was also a little girl secreted in your apartment, whom no one ever saw—­”

“Pardon me, monsieur,” interrupted Cambray, “but it is not the custom for French gentlemen to spy out or chatter about secrets which relate to the fair sex.”

“I am not talking about the sort of female you refer to, monsieur, but about a child—­a girl of perhaps twelve years.”

“How, pray, can one determine the age of a lady whom no one has seen?”

“Certain telltale circumstances give one a clue,” retorted De Fervlans.  “Why, for instance, do you keep a doll in your rooms?”

“A doll?  I play with it myself sometimes!  I am a queer old fellow with peculiar tastes.”

“Very good; we will allow that you are telling the truth.  What have you to say to the fact that you took to your apartment yesterday evening a stray child, and an hour later your friend came out of the house with another child, wrapped in the shawl which had enveloped the lost child when you found her—­”

“Have they been overtaken?” hastily interrupted Cambray, forgetting himself.

“No, they have not—­more ’s the pity!” returned the marquis.  “My detective was not clever enough to perceive the difference between the eight-year-old girl who was carried to your apartments at ten o’clock, and the twelve-year-old little maid whom your friend brought downstairs at eleven, pretending that he was going in search of the lost child’s mother.  Besides, everything conspired to aid your friend to escape.  He was too cunning for us, and got such a start of his pursuers that there was no use trying to follow him.  We do not even know in what direction he has gone.”