If you still maintain that you are the M.de Marsac to whom this commission was entrusted,you will doubtless have no objection to seeing them?'
On this I felt myself placed in a most cruel dilemma.if Irefused to submit my case to the proposed ordeal,I stood an impostor confessed.If I consented to see these strangers,it was probable they would not recognise me,and possible that they might deny me in terms calculated to make my position even worse,if that might be.I hesitated but,Rosny standing inexorable before me awaiting an answer,I finally consented.
'Good!'he said curtly.'This way,if you please.They are here.The latch is tricky.Nay,sir,it is my house.'
Obeying the stern motion of his hand,I passed before him into the next room,feeling myself more humiliated than I can tell by this reference to strangers.For a moment I could see no one.
The day was waning,the room I entered was long and narrow,and illuminated only by a glowing fire.Besides I was myself,perhaps,in some embarrassment.I believed that my conductor had made a mistake,or that his guests had departed,and I turned towards him to ask for an explanation.He merely pointed onwards,however,and I advanced;whereupon a young and handsome lady,who had been seated in the shadow of the great fireplace,rose suddenly,as if startled,and stood looking at me,the glow of the burning wood falling on one side of her face and turning her hair to gold.
'Well!'M.de Rosny said,in a voice which sounded a little odd in my ears.'You do not know madame,I think?'
I saw that she was a complete stranger to me,and bowed to her without speaking.The lady saluted me in turn ceremoniously and in silence.
'Is there no one else here who should know you?'M.de Rosny continued,in a tone almost of persiflage,and with the same change in his voice which had struck me before;but now it was more marked.'If not,M.de Marsac,I am afraid--But first look round,look round,sir;I would not judge any man hastily.'
He laid his hand on my shoulder as he finished in a manner so familiar and so utterly at variance with his former bearing that I doubted if I heard or felt aright.Yet I looked mechanically at the lady,and seeing that her eyes glistened in the firelight,and that she gazed at me very kindly,I wondered still more;falling,indeed,into a very confusion of amazement.This was not lessened but augmented a hundredfold when,turning in obedience to the pressure of de Rosny's hand,I saw beside me,as if she had risen from the floor,another lady--no other than Mademoiselle de la Vire herself!She had that moment stepped out of the shadow of the great fireplace,which had hitherto hidden her,and stood before me curtseying prettily,with the same look on her face and in her eyes which madame's wore.
'Mademoiselle!'I muttered,unable to take my eyes from her.
'Mais oui,monsieur,mademoiselle,'she answered,curtseying lower,with the air of a child rather than a woman.
'Here?'I stammered,my mouth open,my eyes staring.
