iffe, how do you do? I am very glad to see
you. Do you know they said you were dead--ay, and swore to it."

John Ayliffe's mother sank down in a seat, and hid her face with her
hands.

CHAPTER XXXIII.

Marlow could not be hard-hearted with a woman, and he felt for the
terrible state of agitation and alarm, to which John Ayliffe's mother
was reduced.

"We must be gentle with her," he said in French to the Commissary of
Police, who was with him, and whom we have hitherto called the man in
black.

"_Oui, monsieur_," replied the other, taking a pinch of snuff, and
perfectly indifferent whether he was gentle or not,--for the Commissary
had the honor, as he termed it, of assisting at the breaking of several
gentlemen on the wheel, to say nothing of sundry decapitations,
hangings, and the question, ordinary and extraordinary, all of which
have a certain tendency, when witnessed often, slightly to harden the
human heart, so that he was not tender.

Marlow was approaching to speak to the unfortunate woman, when removing
her hands from her eyes, she looked wildly round, exclaiming, "Oh! have
you come to take me, have you come to take me?"

"That must depend upon circumstances, madam," replied Marlow, in a quiet
tone. "I have obtained sufficient proofs of the conspiracy in which your
son has been engaged with yourself and Mr. Shanks, the attorney, to
justify me in applying to the Government of his most Christian Majesty
for your apprehension and removal to England. But I am unwilling to deal
at all harshly with you, if it can be avoided."

"Oh! pray don't, pray don't!" she exclaimed vehemently; "my son will
kill me, I do believe, if he knew that you had found me out; for he has
told me, and written to me so often to hide myself carefully, that he
would think it was my fault."

"It is his own fault in ordering your letters to him to be sent to the
Silver Cross at Hartwell," replied Marlow. "Every body in the house knew
the handwriting, and became aware that you were not dead, as had been
pretended. But your son will soon be in a situation to kill nobody; for
the very fact of your being found here, with the other circumstances we
know, is sufficient to convict him of perjury."

"Then he'll lose the property and the title, and not be Sir John any
more," said the unhappy woman.

"Beyond all doubt," replied Marlow. "But to return to the matter before
us; my conduct with regard to yourself must be regulated entirely by