“What, my poor Lucienne!” she exclaimed.  “Are you so sick as all that?”

But she stopped short as she recognized M. de Tregars; and, in a suspicious tone,

“What a singular meeting!” she said.

Marius bowed.

“You know Lucienne?”

What she meant by that he understood perfectly.  “Lucienne is my sister, madame,” he said coldly.

She shrugged her shoulders.  “What humbug!”

“It’s the truth,” affirmed Mlle. Lucienne; “and you know that I never lie.”

Mme. Zelie was dumbfounded.

“If you say so,” she muttered.  “But no matter:  that’s queer.”

M. de Tregars interrupted her with a gesture,

“And, what’s more, it is because Lucienne is my sister that you see her there lying upon that bed.  They attempted to murder her to-day!”

“Oh!”

“It was her mother who tried to get rid of her, so as to possess herself of the fortune which my father had left her; and there is every reason to believe that the snare was contrived by Vincent Favoral.”

Mme. Zelie did not understand very well; but, when Marius and Mlle. Lucienne had informed her of all that it was useful for her to know,

“Why,” she exclaimed, “what a horrid rascal that old Vincent must be!”

And, as M. de Tregars remained dumb,

“This afternoon,” she went on, “I didn’t tell you any stories; but I didn’t tell you every thing, either.”  She stopped; and, after a moment of deliberation,

“Well, I don’t care for old Vincent,” she said.  “Ah! he tried to have Lucienne killed, did he?  Well, then, I am going to tell every thing I know.  First of all, he wasn’t any thing to me.  It isn’t very flattering; but it is so.  He has never kissed so much as the end of my finger.  He used to say that he loved me, but that he respected me still more, because I looked so much like a daughter he had lost.  Old humbug!  And I believed him too!  I did, upon my word, at least in the beginning.  But I am not such a fool as I look.  I found out very soon that he was making fun of me; and that he was only using me as a blind to keep suspicion away from another woman.”

“From what woman?”

“Ah! now, I do not know!  All I know is that she is married, that he is crazy about her, and that they are to run away together.”

“Hasn’t he gone, then?”

Mme. Cadelle’s face had become somewhat anxious, and for over a minute she seemed to hesitate.

“Do you know,” she said at last, “that my answer is going to cost me a lot?  They have promised me a pile of money; but I haven’t got it yet.  And, if I say any thing, good-by!  I sha’n’t have any thing.”

M. de Tregars was opening his lips to tell her that she might rest easy on that score; but she cut him short.

“Well, no,” she said:  “Old Vincent hasn’t gone.  He got up a comedy, so he told me, to throw the lady’s husband off the track.  He sent off a whole lot of baggage by the railroad; but he staid in Paris.”