That Mademoiselle de
Caylus had been his sport and plaything. And that we in trying
to be beforehand with Bezers had been striving to save a
scoundrel from his due. It meant all that, as soon as we grasped
it in the least.
"Madame," said Croisette gravely, after a pause so prolonged that
her smile faded pitifully from her face, scared by our strange
looks. "Your husband has been some time away from you? He only
returned, I think, a week or two ago?"
"That is so," she answered, naively, and our last hope vanished.
"But what of that? He was back with me again, and only
yesterday--only yesterday!" she continued, clasping her hands,
"we were so happy."
"And now, madame?"
She looked at me, not comprehending.
"I mean," I hastened to explain, "we do not understand how you
come to be here. And a prisoner." I was really thinking that
her story might throw some light upon ours.
"I do not know, myself," she said. "Yesterday, in the afternoon,
I paid a visit to the Abbess of the Ursulines.
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