urnemine is at the galleys."

"I denied it, and treated the one-eyed woman as a liar. But bah! she
declares she knows where the girl is now, and that she has grown up,
that she has her, and that it only depends on her to discover
everything."

"Is hell, then, unchained against me to-day?" exclaimed the notary, in a
fit of rage. "What shall I say to this woman? What shall I offer her to
hold her tongue? Does she seem well off?"

"As I treated her like a beggar, she shook her hand-basket, and there
was money inside of it."

"And she knows where this young girl is now?"

"So she says."

"And she is the daughter of the Countess Sarah Macgregor!" said the
stupefied notary; "and just now she offered me so much to declare that
her daughter was not dead; and the girl is alive, and I can restore her
to her mother! But, then, the false register of her death! If a search
were made, I am ruined! This crime may put others on the scent."

After a moment's silence, he said to Madame Seraphin:

"This one-eyed woman knows where the child is?"

"Yes."

"And the woman will call again?"

"To-morrow."

"Write to Polidori, to come to me this evening, at nine o'clock."

"What! Will you rid yourself of the young girl and the old woman, too?
Ferrand, that will be too much at once!"

"I bid you write to Polidori, to come here this evening, at nine
o'clock!"

* * * * *

At the end of this day, Rodolph said to Murphy: "Desire M. de Grauen to
despatch a courier this instant; Cecily must be in Paris in six days."

"What! that she-devil again? The diabolical wife of poor David, as
beautiful as she is infamous! For what purpose, monseigneur?"

"For what purpose, Sir Walter Murphy? Ask that question, in a month
hence, of the notary, Jacques Ferrand."

CHAPTER VI.

THE ANONYMOUS LETTER.

Towards ten o'clock in the evening of the same day in which
Fleur-de-Marie was carried off by the Chouette and Schoolmaster, a man
on horseback arrived at the Bouqueval farm, representing himself as
coming from M. Rodolph to tranquillise Madame Georges as to the safety
of her young friend, and to assure her of her safe return ere long. The
man further stated that M. Rodolph, having very important reasons for
making the request, particularly desired no letters might be addressed
to him at Paris for the present; but that, in the event of Madame
Georges having anything particular to communicate, the messeng