She told her share of the story—­she told what happened.  There was apparently one terrible scene when she was confronted with Harry Wethermill in the office of Monsieur Fleuriot, the Juge d’lnstruction, and on her knees, with the tears streaming down her face, besought him to confess the truth.  For a long while he held out.  And then there came a strange and human turn to the affair.  Adele Rossignol—­or, to give her real name, Adele Tace, the wife of Hippolyte—­had conceived a veritable passion for Harry Wethermill.  He was of a not uncommon type, cold and callous in himself, yet with the power to provoke passion in women.  And Adele Tace, as the story was told of how Harry Wethermill had paid his court to Celia Harland, was seized with a vindictive jealousy.  Hanaud was not surprised.  He knew the woman-criminal of his country—­brutal, passionate, treacherous.  The anonymous letters in a woman’s handwriting which descend upon the Rue de Jerusalem, and betray the men who have committed thefts, had left him no illusions upon that figure in the history of crime.  Adele Rossignol ran forward to confess, so that Harry Wethermill might suffer to the last possible point of suffering.  Then at last Wethermill gave in and, broken down by the ceaseless interrogations of the magistrate, confessed in his turn too.  The one, and the only one, who stood firmly throughout and denied the crime was Helene Vauquier.  Her thin lips were kept contemptuously closed, whatever the others might admit.  With a white, hard face, quietly and respectfully she faced the magistrate week after week.  She was the perfect picture of a servant who knew her place.  And nothing was wrung from her.  But without her help the story became complete.  And Ricardo was at pains to write it out.

CHAPTER XV

CELIA’S STORY

The story begins with the explanation of that circumstance which had greatly puzzled Mr. Ricardo—­Celia’s entry into the household of Mme. Dauvray.

Celia’s father was a Captain Harland, of a marching regiment, who had little beyond good looks and excellent manners wherewith to support his position.  He was extravagant in his tastes, and of an easy mind in the presence of embarrassments.  To his other disadvantages he added that of falling in love with a pretty girl no better off than himself.  They married, and Celia was born.  For nine years they managed, through the wife’s constant devotion, to struggle along and to give their daughter an education.  Then, however, Celia’s mother broke down under the strain and died.  Captain Harland, a couple of years later, went out of the service with discredit, passed through the bankruptcy court, and turned showman.  His line was thought-reading; he enlisted the services of his daughter, taught her the tricks of his trade, and became “The Great Fortinbras” of the music-halls.  Captain Harland would move amongst the audience, asking the spectators in a whisper to think of a number or of an article in their pockets, after the usual fashion, while the child, in her short frock, with her long fair hair tied back with a ribbon, would stand blind-folded upon the platform and reel off the answers with astonishing rapidity.  She was singularly quick, singularly receptive.