"What are we to do, wife?" said the landlord. "Who the devil could
have supposed we would have so many on our hands in these days? Before
I serve her a decent breakfast that woman will get impatient. Stop, an
idea! evidently she is a person of quality. I'll propose to put her
with the one we have upstairs. What do you think?"
When the landlord went to look for the new arrival he found only
Francine, to whom he spoke in a low voice, taking her to the farther
end of the kitchen, so as not to be overheard.
"If the ladies wish," he said, "to be served in private, as I have no
doubt they wish to do, I have a very nice breakfast all ready for a
lady and her son, and I dare say wouldn't mind sharing it with you;
they are persons of condition," he added, mysteriously.
He had hardly said the words before he felt a tap on his back from the
handle of a whip. He turned hastily and saw behind him a short,
thick-set man, who had noiselessly entered from a side room,--an
apparition which seemed to terrify the hostess, the cook, and the
scullion. The landlord turned pale when he saw the intruder, who shook
back the hair which concealed his forehead and eyes, raised himself on
the points of his toes to reach the other's ears, and said to him in a
whisper: "You know the cost of an imprudence or a betrayal, and the
color of the money we pay it in.
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