At The Villa Rose

She told her share of the story--she told what happened. There was

apparently one terrible scene when she was confronted with Harry

Wethermill in the office of Monsieur Fleuriot, the Juge

d'lnstruction, and on her knees, with the tears streaming down her

face, besought him to confess the truth. For a long while he held

out. And then there came a strange and human turn to the affair.

Adele Rossignol--or, to give her real name, Adele Tace, the wife

of Hippolyte--had conceived a veritable passion for Harry

Wethermill. He was of a not uncommon type, cold and callous in

himself, yet with the power to provoke passion in women. And Adele

Tace, as the story was told of how Harry Wethermill had paid his

court to Celia Harland, was seized with a vindictive jealousy.

Hanaud was not surprised. He knew the woman-criminal of his

country--brutal, passionate, treacherous. The anonymous letters in

a woman's handwriting which descend upon the Rue de Jerusalem, and

betray the men who have committed thefts, had left him no

illusions upon that figure in the history of crime. Adele

Rossignol ran forward to confess, so that Harry Wethermill might

suffer to the last possible point of suffering. Then at last

Wethermill gave in and, broken down by the ceaseless

interrogations of the magistrate, confessed in his turn too. The

one, and the only one, who stood firmly throughout and denied the

crime was Helene Vauquier. Her thin lips were kept contemptuously

closed, whatever the others might admit. With a white, hard face,

quietly and respectfully she faced the magistrate week after week.

She was the perfect picture of a servant who knew her place. And

nothing was wrung from her. But without her help the story became

complete. And Ricardo was at pains to write it out.