The girl put on a countenance of profound thought, as if she were calling upon her memory for a stupendous effort, looking back into the night of ages.
"I'm sure I can't say, sir; but it was a long time ago—quite early in the summer."
"You are sure she was not here yesterday?"
"O yes, sir. Mademoiselle left Plymouth a week ago, and nobody called yesterday."
"O, she left Plymouth a week ago, did she, and nobody called yesterday?" repeated Bothwell, with a despairing helplessness which smote the slavey's heart.
It seemed a cruel thing to deceive such a nice-looking, outspoken gentleman—about his young lady, too—for it was evident to Mary Jane that Miss Heathcote must have been keeping company with this gentleman, and that she had broken off with him. If Mary Jane's fidelity to the little Frenchwoman had not been firm as a rock, she would have given way at this point, and told Bothwell the truth.
"Kindly give me Mdlle. Duprez's address," he said. "I have very important business with her, and should like to telegraph immediately."
"Mademoiselle did not leave any address, sir."
"Not leave any address? A woman of business! But she would have her letters sent after her, surely," urged Bothwell.
"No, sir. She did not wish her letters to be sent. She would be on the move, she said; and she would rather risk leaving the letters here than having them follow her from place to place."
There was an air of reality about these particulars that convinced Bothwell, whereby he showed his inexperience; for liars always go into particulars, and prop up their falsehoods with a richness of detail that is rare in truthful statements.
"Then you really don't know where Mdlle. Duprez is to be found?"
"No, sir; but I am expecting her home at any moment. She might walk in while we are standing here."
"I wish she would," said Bothwell. "I want much to see her."
He left his card, and went away, cruelly disappointed.
And now he set his teeth, like a man who is going to meet his foe, as he turned his face towards that white-walled villa on one of the hills above the town, that fair and pleasant place where he had dawdled away so many summer afternoons, all the while wishing himself anywhere rather than in that Armida garden, feeling himself a knave and a dastard for being there. He hated the place now with a deadly hatred. It seemed to him that those white walls had been built of dead men's bones, as if the house within and without savoured of the charnel.
The good old man, so fooled, so wronged by a false wife
