For from behind the high box-hedge that hemmed them in, the French maid, Louise Aubin, glided across the silent turf back to the house, her piquant features contracted in a venomous frown. She had come out to seek her young mistress on some trifling errand, but, having found her, decided to retreat without fulfilling it. CHAPTER XI THE PEERING EYES Rumour at Ottermouth had a trick of travelling as quickly as it does through the bazaars of the East. When the French maid turned away from the rose garden, after seeing Violet Maynard in Leslie Chermside's arms, she was already aware of the proceedings at the inquest held earlier in the afternoon. She knew, therefore, that the gentleman whose love affair seemed to be prospering so gaily had been called as a witness, and had owned to an acquaintance with her deceased admirer. Now mademoiselle was an adept at swift deduction, and, putting two and two together, she had arrived at the conclusion that this Mr. Chermside, who had admitted having business relations with Levi Levison, must be the individual whom Mr. Travers Nugent suspected. Mr. Nugent had assured her that he had ascertained that Levison had appointed to meet some one on the marsh on the fatal evening. It followed as almost a certainty that the appointment must have been with the gentleman who had a mysterious connexion with Levison, the nature of which he refused to divulge. And now this _scélérat_, this assassin who had ruined her prospects by untimely removing the amorous "financial agent," was making successful love to Miss Violet. It was preposterous, and not to be countenanced for a moment, that the murderer should carry off the great heiress, while his cruel crime had relegated her, Louise Aubin, to a probable future of celibate poverty. If only in her young mistress's interest, the atrocious thing must be nipped in the bud. But mademoiselle was endowed with a fair share of French caution, the quality which kindly Nature supplies to balance French impulse, and she was not going to jeopardize a comfortable and lucrative situation by making a premature move. She must first put it beyond all doubt that the man whom Mr. Levi Levison had arranged to meet on the marsh was the man whom she had just seen in the rose garden, and to that end she must take counsel with that dear gentleman who had saved her from the error of denouncing Pierre Legros. "Ce cher Monsieur Nugent--'e admire me just a leetle himself, I think," she murmured, as she tripped back to the house across the lawn. "I make 'im tell me all he knows." Whereby Mademoiselle Louise Aubin showed herself to be of sanguine temperament, but a poor student of the art of reading men.