As soon as she had returned to her seat,

“There you are dancing gayly,” he said, “and poor Vincent is doubtless groaning at this moment over his separation from you.”

“Ah!  I’d pity him if I had time,” she said.

“He was fond of you?”

“Don’t speak of it.”

“If he had not been fond of you, he would not have put you here.”

Mme. Zelie made a little face of equivocal meaning.

“What proof is that?” she murmured.

“He would not have spent so much money for you.”

“For me!” she interrupted,—­“for me!  What have I cost him of any consequence?  Is it for me that he bought, furnished, and fitted out this house?  No, no!  He had the cage; and he put in the bird, —­the first he happened to find.  He brought me here as he might have brought any other woman, young or old, pretty or ugly, blonde or brunette.  As to what I spent here, it was a mere bagatelle compared with what the other did,—­the one before me.  Amanda kept telling me all the time I was a fool.  You may believe me, then, when I tell you that M. Vincent will not wet many handkerchiefs with the tears he’ll shed over me.”

“But do you know what became of the one before you, as you call her, —­whether she is alive or dead, and owing to what circumstances the cage became empty?”

But, instead of answering, Mme. Zelie was fixing upon Marius de Tregars a suspicious glance.  And, after a moment only,

“Why do you ask me that?” she said.

“I would like to know.”

She did not permit him to proceed.  Rising from her seat, and stepping briskly up to him,

“Do you belong to the police, by chance?” she asked in a tone of mistrust.

If she was anxious, it was evidently because she had motives of anxiety which she had concealed.  If, two or three times she had interrupted herself, it was because, manifestly, she had a secret to keep.  If the idea of police had come into her mind, it is because, very probably, they had recommended her to be on her guard.

M. de Tregars understood all this, and, also, that he had tried to go too fast.

“Do I look like a secret police-agent?” he asked.

She was examining him with all her power of penetration.

“Not at all, I confess,” she replied.  “But, if you are not one, how is it that you come to my house, without knowing me from this side of sole leather, to ask me a whole lot of questions, which I am fool enough to answer?”

“I told you I was a friend of M. Favoral.”

“Who’s that Favoral?”

“That’s M. Vincent’s real name, madame.”

She opened her eyes wide.

“You must be mistaken.  I never heard him called any thing but Vincent.”

“It is because he had especial motives for concealing his personality.  The money he spent here did not belong to him:  he took it, he stole it, from the Mutual Credit Company where he was cashier, and where he left a deficit of twelve millions.”