"Bring down a couple of bottles of wine," said Levasseur from the bottom of the stairs. Madame Jaubert obeyed the order, and in a few minutes returned. I renewed my supplications to be released, and was of course extremely liberal of promises. "It is vain talking," said the woman. "I do not believe they will harm you; but even if it were as you say, it is too late now to retrace my steps. You cannot escape. That fool below is already three-parts intoxicated: they are both armed, and would hesitate at nothing if they but suspected treachery." It was vain to urge her. She grew sullen and menacing and was insisting that the gag should be replaced in my mouth, when a thought struck me. "Levasseur called you Marie Duquesne just now; but surely your name is Jaubert--is it not?" "Do not trouble yourself about my name," she replied, "that is my affair, not yours." "Because if you _are_ the Marie Duquesne who once kept a shop in Cranbourne Alley, and lost a child called Marie-Louise, I could tell you something." A wild light broke from her dark eyes, and a suppressed scream from her lips. "I am that Marie Duquesne!" she said in a voice tremulous with emotion. "Then I have to inform you that the child so long supposed to be lost I discovered nearly three weeks ago." The woman fairly leapt towards me, clasped me fiercely by the arms, and peering in my face with eyes on fire with insane excitement, hissed out, "You lie--you lie, you dog! You are striving to deceive me! She is in heaven: the angels told me so long since." I do not know, by the way, whether the falsehood I was endeavoring to palm off upon the woman was strictly justifiable or not; but I am fain to believe that there are few moralists that would not, under the circumstances, have acted pretty much as I did. "If your child was lost when going on an errand to Coventry Street, and her name is Marie-Louise Duquesne, I tell you she is found. How should I otherwise have become acquainted with these particulars?" "True--true," she muttered: "how else should he know? Where is she?" added the woman in tones of agonized entreaty, as she sank down and clasped my knees. "Tell me--tell me, as you hope for life or mercy, where I may find my child?" "Release me, give me a chance of escape, and to-morrow your child shall be in your arms. Refuse, and the secret dies with me."