"
La Couteau's dry voice rang as if it were an axe dealing a deadly blow.
Although she could not understand the lady's sudden pallor and despairing
emotion, she certainly seemed to derive cruel enjoyment from it.
"Are you quite sure of your information?" resumed Constance, struggling
against the facts. "That is perhaps mere village tittle-tattle."
"Tittle-tattle, madame? Oh! when I undertake to do anything I do it
properly. I spoke to the gendarmes. They have scoured the whole district,
and it is certain that Alexandre-Honore left no address behind him when
he went off with those three hundred francs. He is still on the run. As
for that I'll stake my name on it."
This was indeed a hard blow for Constance. That lad, whom she fancied she
had found again, of whom she dreamt incessantly, and on whom she had
based so many unacknowledgable plans of vengeance, escaped her, vanished
once more into the unknown! She was distracted by it as by some pitiless
stroke of fate, some fresh and irreparable defeat. However, she continued
the interrogatory.
"Surely you did not merely see the gendarmes? you were instructed to
question everybody.
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