"Alas, Mademoiselle, I have the worst possible news. Your young friend is dead."
"Dead! And there was no one to tell me. The gentleman who was to befriend her, to whom she went as to a protector and benefactor, he did not even take the trouble to tell me her fate."
"She may never have found him, poor child. She may have been lured away from her destination and from London by a villain. She met her death more than two hundred miles from London. She fell from a railway-bridge, and was killed instantly; but whether that death was an accident or a murder, no one yet knows, except the Great Judge of all human actions."
"You believe it was—"
"Murder. I am here to discover the motive of that crime."
CHAPTER XIII.
A STUDENT OF MEN AND WOMEN.
There was a silence of some minutes, during which Mademoiselle Beauville wept quietly. And then Heathcote and the ex-police-officer rose to take leave.
"I thank you sincerely, Mademoiselle, for having given me all the information in your power to give, and I must beg you to accept some small compensation for the time I have wasted," said Mr. Heathcote, slipping a couple of twenty-franc pieces into the dressmaker's hand.
The lonely spinster's eyes shone with a feverish light as her skinny fingers closed upon the gold. It was like manna dropped from heaven. Long and weary weeks had passed since her robes et modes had brought her so much money. Her chief customers of late had been the grisettes of the quarter, who had dribbled out their payments by two or three francs at a time, and who had exacted the maximum of labour for the minimum of pay. Mademoiselle's hollow cheeks were flushed with the warm red wine, her heart glowed with the thought that she could now pay her last term to the Harpagon landlord—not much worse, perhaps, than the rest of his species, but all landlords seem Harpagons when they claim their due from the needy.
"Monsieur is too good, too generous," murmured the seamstress; "I should refuse all remuneration, only work has been so slack of late—"
"Not one word, Mademoiselle. Stay, I have one more question, and that an important one, to ask before I take my
