“Does she know any thing?”

“Every thing.”

“Make haste and bring her here.”

From the time when M. Folgat first hoped for this recovery of the servant-girl, he had made up his mind to make the most of her evidence.

He had slipped a portrait of the Countess Claudieuse into an album of Dionysia’s, amidst some thirty photographs.  He now went for this album, and had just put it upon the centre-table in the parlor when the agent came back with his captive.

She was a tall, stout woman of some forty years, with hard features, masculine manners, and dressed, as all common English-women are, with great pretensions to fashion.

When M. Folgat questioned her, she answered in very fair, intelligible French, which was only marred by her strong English accent,—­

“I stayed four years at the house in Vine Street; and I should be there still, but for the war.  As soon as I entered upon my duties, I became aware that I was put in charge of a house in which two lovers had their meetings.  I was not exactly pleased, because, you know, we have our self-respect; but it was a good place.  I had very little to do, and so I staid.  However, my master mistrusted me:  I saw that very clearly.  When a meeting was to take place, my master sent me on some errand to Versailles, to Saint Germain, or even to Orleans.  This hurt me so much, that I determined I would find out what they tried so hard to conceal from me.  It was not very difficult; and the very next week I knew that my master was no more Sir Francis Burnett than I was; and that he had borrowed the name from a friend of his.”

“How did you go about to find it out?”

“Oh! very simply.  One day, when my master went away on foot, I followed him, and saw him go into a house in University Street.  Before the house opposite, some servants were standing and talking.  I asked them who the gentleman was; and they told me it was the son of the Marquis de Boiscoran.”

“So much for the master; but the lady.”

Suky Wood smiled.

“As for the lady,” she replied, “I did the same thing to find her out.  It cost me, however, a great deal more time and a great deal more patience, because she took the very greatest precautions; and I lost more than one afternoon in watching her.  But, the more she tried to hide, the more I was curious to know, as a matter of course.  At last, one evening when she left the house in her carriage, I took a cab and followed her.  I traced her thus to her house; and next morning I talked to the servants there, and they told me that she was a lady who lived in the province, but came every year to Paris to spend a month with her parents, and that her name was Countess Claudieuse.”

And Jacques had imagined and strongly maintained that Suky would not know any thing, in fact, could not know any thing!

“But did you ever see this lady?” asked M. Folgat.