en a false name, or come here at all, if my son had
not told me that it was the only way for him to get the estate, and
promised that I should come back directly he had got it. But now, he
says I must remain here forever, and hide myself;" and she wept
bitterly.

In the mean while, the Commissary continued to write actively, putting
down all she said. She seemed to perceive that she was committing
herself, but, as is very common in such cases, she only rendered the
difficulties worse, adding, in a low tone, "After all, the estate ought
to have been his by right."

"If you think so, madame," replied Marlow, "you had better return to
England, and prove it; but I can hardly imagine that your son and his
sharp lawyer would have had recourse to fraud and perjury in order to
keep you concealed, if they judged that he had any right at all."

"Ay, he might have a right in the eyes of God," replied the unhappy
woman, "not in the eyes of the law. We were as much married before
heaven as any two people could be, though we might not be married before
men."

"That is to say, you and your husband," said the Commissary in an
insinuating tone.

"I and Mr. John Hastings, old Sir John's son," she answered; and the
Commissary drawing Marlow for a moment aside, conversed with him in a
whisper.

What they said she could not hear, and could not have understood had she
heard, for they spoke in French; but she grew alarmed as they went on,
evidently speaking about her, and turning their eyes towards her from
time to time. She thought they meditated at least sending her in custody
to England, and perhaps much worse. Tales of bastiles, and dungeons, and
wringing confessions from unwilling prisoners by all sorts of tortures,
presented themselves to her imagination, and before they had concluded,
she exclaimed in a tone of entreaty, "I will tell all, indeed I will
tell all, if you will not send me any where."

"The Commissary thinks, madame," said Marlow, "that the first thing we
ought to do is to examine your papers, and then to question you from the
evidence they afford. The keys must, therefore, be found, or the locks
must be broken open."

"Perhaps they may be in that drawer," said Mrs. Ayliffe, pointing across
to an escrutoire; and there they were accordingly found. No great search
for papers was necessary; for the house was but scantily furnished, and
the escrutoire itself contained a packet of six or seven letters from
John Aylif