kling
dislike of Mona Macdonald. Against both of these his umbrage might
be supposed to have been heated by his recent ignominious expulsion
from Stillyside; and to gratify this resentment he might now be
executing some scheme of revenge, wherein, from his intimacy with
the young Duchatel, he could know that that family had cause to be
ready to assist him. Here was a clue to the recovery of his ward:--in
legal parlance, here was a prima facie case; and it but remained
to find and prosecute the criminals. To seize his son, and, by
threats or promises, extract a confession from him was the first
idea. But where was the errant and suspected Narcisse to be found?
His father knew he was absent, so the mother was summoned. She
came, but advanced no further than the threshold of the room, and
fell a trembling with fear, behaviour that she would fain have
dissembled to be from cold, for, with the divination with which
guilt endows its subject, she at once knew that the stranger was
the young Montigny, and herself had been cited in order to suffer
a searching cross-examination.

"Woman," said the advocate sternly, and wheeling his arm-chair
round so as to face her, "Woman, where is your son?"

"Helas!" she exclaimed, and shrugged her shoulders, as much as to
say, "I don't know where he is;" and smiled a rueful smile.

"No grinning now," cried the lawyer, raising his finger and shaking
it at her, and frowning as he was wont to do when he wished to
intimidate a witness, "no grinning now, madam. Will you pretend to
say you know nothing of where he was last night, where he is at
present?"

"Helas!" again exclaimed the affrighted Babet: "sir you forget
yourself. Last night? Why it is yet night. Open the shutters and
put out the lamp, and you will still be in darkness. Let me return
to bed."

"Babet Blais, many a better woman than you have I wished bedridden,"
the advocate cried with bitterness. "Beshrew me, but your answer.
Remember I am flint if you are steel, hence the less often we are
smitten together in this enquiry, the fewer may be the revealing
sparks. Babet Blais, here is an affair of blackest tinder, whereon
your bated breath has blown already, until it glows upon your
guilty face, as grimly as the lurid East that brews a rainy day,
to you the type of tears."

[Illustration: "Babet Blais, here is an affair of blackest tinder,
whereon your bated breath has blown already, until it glows upon
your guilty face."]

"