For the first time since the death of the young widow in Gretna, she breathed freely, for she began to feel some security in her new possessions. At last, everything had turned out as Raste predicted, and she had worked her plans well. The young mother, sleeping in the Bergeron tomb, could never testify against her, and the child was too young to give any but the most sketchy information about herself. She did not even know the name of her parents, and since her recovery from the fever she seemed to have forgotten a great deal that she knew before. Her illness had left her in a pitiable condition; she was weak and dull, and did not appear to care for anything but the blue heron, which was her constant companion. Whether she was conscious of her great loss, and was mourning for her mother, madame could not decide. At first, she had asked constantly for her, and madame had told her kindly, and with caresses, which were not returned, that her mother had gone away for a while, and had left her with her Tante Pauline; and that she must be a good little girl, and love her Tante Pauline, while her mother was away.
Lady Jane looked at madame’s bland face with such solemnly scrutinizing eyes, that she almost made her blush for the falsehood she was telling, but said nothing; her little thoughts and memories were very busy, and very far away; she had not forgotten as much as madame fancied she had, neither did she believe as much as madame thought she did. Whatever of doubt or regret passed through her little brain, she made no sign, but remained quiet and docile; she never laughed, and seldom cried; she was very little trouble, and scarcely noticed anything that was going on around her. In fact, she was stupefied and subdued, by the sudden misfortunes that had come upon her, until she seemed a very different being from the bright, spirited child of a few weeks before.
CHAPTER VIII
LADY JANE FINDS A FRIEND
From the first, madame had insisted that the stranger’s property should not be meddled with until a certain time had passed.
“We must wait,” she said to the eager and impulsive Raste, “to see if she is missed, and advertised for. A person of her position must have friends somewhere, and it would be rather bad for us if she was traced here, and it was found out that she died in our house; we might even be suspected of killing her to get her money. Detectives are capable of anything, and it isn’t best to get in their clutches; but if we don’t touch her things, they can’t accuse us, and Dr. Debrot knows she died of fever, so I would be considered a kind-hearted Christian woman, and I’d be paid well for all my trouble, if it should come out that she died here.”
These arguments had their weight with Raste, who, though thoroughly unscrupulous, was careful about getting into the toils of the law, his father’s fate serving as an example to him of the difficulty of escaping from those toils when they once close upon a victim.
If at that time they had noticed the advertisement in the journals signed “Blue Heron” it would have given them a terrible fright; but they seldom read the papers, and before they thought of looking for a notice of the missing woman and child, it had been withdrawn.
For several weeks Raste went regular to the grocery on the levee, and searched over the daily papers until his eyes ached; but in vain; among all the singular advertisements and “personals,” there was nothing that referred in any way to the subject that interested him.
Therefore, after some six weeks had passed, madame deemed that it was safe to begin to cover her tracks, as Raste had advised with more force than elegance. The first thing to do was to move into another neighborhood; for that reason, she selected the house in Good Children Street, it being as far away from her present residence as she could possibly get, without leaving the city altogether.
At first she was tempted to give up work, and live like a lady for a while; then she considered that her sudden wealth might arouse suspicion, and she decided to carry on her present business, with the addition of a small stock of fancy articles to sell on which she could make a snug little profit, and at the same time give greater importance and respectability to her humble calling.