want this for her sister. It seems to me she never works for herself!' Honor kissed Madame le Bœuf. It was so sweet to have friends. She felt that through her desolation. 'You are not well, my dear,' said the kind Louise, looking more closely in her face as she said adieu. 'Well? Oh yes! quite well-only tired!' It wearied her terribly to carry the thousand francs little Monsieur le Boeuf counted over to her with such conscious benevolent humility back to Anglet. There it is, Conny; there is the money handing her the bag. She was going up-stairs when Mrs. Blake stopped her. 'What do you know about this, Honor?' She held out some papers, partly printed, which summoned Mrs. Blake and her two eldest daughters to appear before the Juge d'Instruction the next morning, to depose as to any knowledge they might have of a certain forged cheque passed on Messieurs Jarny and Le Souffleur, bearing the name of Lady Tracy. 'I heard something about that to-day, mamma. I do not understand it at all.' 'We must go, at any rate,' said Mrs. Blake. The man who brought these was very civil, but he said we must not fail.' 'What a bore!' said Conny; 'I wanted so much to get away on Friday. I promised Spencer, and he will be so anxious; and I have twenty things to get before I go-gloves and things.' 'We may have time for all to-morrow,' said. Mrs. Blake. Honor, I wish you would come down-stairs soon, and talk to me about what you must do while I am away. I feel very anxious about leaving Newton.' Honor obeyed. She listened conscientiously during several hours to Mrs. Blake's instructions as to her attendance on Newton and the management of the house during her mother's absence, and promised to abide by them all. She also helped to forward her mother's preparations for her journey, and did not go to bed till quite tired out. 'I never see you at all now, Honor,' said Emmy, when her sister went with her to her room to hear her evening prayers. 'You shall sleep in my room to-night, Emmy; and I will tell you about Paris. I did not see much of it, you know; Lady Tracy was so ill all the time; but two or three times she made me go out to see the Louvre and other places.' This charmed Emmy. She lay awake till Honor came to bed, and made her talk till the elder sister was glad to go to sleep. She was thankful to get through that night so well. Directly after breakfast the next morning, Mrs. Blake, Honor, and Constance had to set out for Bayonne. Conny grumbled the whole way, but cleared her face from its gloom before she entered the bureau of the Juge d'Instruction. The habit of trying to look well whenever she came into contact with one of the other sex was 'in grain' in Conny. At the top of a not over clean staircase, they found themselves in a wide corridor surrounded by benches, on which sat a choice collection of the sovereign people, waiting to have their various matters of business attended to. Honor was so weary she was glad to sit down with her mother beside two old market women. Conny scorned such contact, and posed herself, in the attitude of a photograph by Silvy, against the balustrade. After a time an officer called them one by one into the judge's room. The Juge d'Instruction had often met Mrs. Blake and her daughters in society, and was extremely polite in his greeting and in his regrets for the trouble he had caused them. The examination of Constance and her mother was not a long one. Some little difficulty had to be overcome at first through Mrs. Blake's feelings being excessively ruffled when called upon to sign herself by her maiden name-Emily Carrol, widow of Blake.' She felt this to be very rude and insulting, and it required no small exercise of tact on the part of the magistrate to soothe her. He soon discovered that neither she nor her younger daughter could give any evidence at all in the case. Mrs. Blake had never seen Lady Tracy write a cheque; she did not even know how that lady drew the money she needed. She herself received her funds through the British consul, and should have supposed that Lady Tracy did the same. She knew Lady Tracy's handwriting and signature, and that in the cheque now shown her was certainly not genuine. Whose writing it was she could not guess; neither Mr. Tracy's, nor his mother's, nor that of any other person she knew. Lady Tracy's Christian name was Honor. It was a family name among the Blakes, and was never spelt in any way but one. The spelling in the cheque, Honner,' was not correct; and she had never known any person spell it so that she could remember. Constance could depose very little more. She too knew nothing of how Lady Tracy drew her money till the week before her aunt left Bayonne, when her sister had brought in her hand a folded paper, which she said was a cheque for a thousand francs, to be presented to Messieurs Jarny and Le Souffleur. It had been sent through Madame Quinqualeronvontroyez. 'Could Mademoiselle remember the date?' After some thought Conny named it. She remembered it from the date of her own journey to Pau occurring the following week. |