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Updated: July 14, 2025
At last, when the long afternoon was drawing to a close, Senator Burton went down and had another long conversation with the Poulains.
Finally, the good Poulains, separately and in unison, had begged the Senator to try and find out something about their curious guest, as she apparently knew too little French to make herself intelligible. Now that he heard Nancy's quiet assertion, the Senator felt sure there had been a mistake. The Poulains had evidently confused pretty Mrs. Dampier with some wandering British spinster.
Of everything that had happened in connection with this extraordinary Dampier affair, perhaps this having to tell the Poulains that their hotel was to be searched was the most disagreeable and painful thing of all to their American friend and kindly client. The Senator was now very sorry, that, in deference to his son's wish, he had made such a suggestion.
"At what time shall I expect your clerk?" asked Senator Burton. "I think I ought to prepare the Poulains." "No, there I think you're wrong! Far better let him go back with you now, and hear what they have to say. Let him also get a properly signed statement from Mrs. Dampier. Then he can come back here and type out his report and her statement for reference.
Perhaps you, Monsieur le Senateur, will inform the hotel people that a Perquisition is about to take place." As he walked away from the Prefecture of Police, Senator Burton told himself that the French were certainly a curiously casual people. How strange that the Prefect should have asked him to break the news of what was to happen at eleven o'clock the next morning to the Poulains!
His face lit up, it lost its expression of apathetic fatigue; and his first quick questions showed him a keen and clever cross-examiner. At once he seized on the real mystery, and that though the Senator had not made more of it than he could help. That was the discrepancy in the account given by the Poulains and by Mrs. Dampier respectively as to the lady's arrival at the hotel.
"What is it?" said Nancy again, trying to smile. "What is it, Mr. Burton?" And then the Senator, motioning her to a chair, sat down too. "The Poulains," he said gravely he was telling himself that he had never come across so accomplished an actress as this young Englishwoman was proving herself to be "the Poulains," he repeated very distinctly, "declare that you arrived here last night alone.
I have no doubt " she tossed her head "that Jules has been working too hard; the Poulains are foolish not to have more help from outside. I came in just to oblige Madame Poulain while she and her husband accompanied Jules to the station. But I also am busy. I have my own work to attend to just as much as anybody else; and my three children are all working at the Exhibition."
He was owner of an hotel at Chantilly, and as he was young, healthy, and reputed kind and good-tempered, he had the right to expect a good dowry with his future wife. The fact that this was an Exhibition Year was a great stroke of luck for the Poulains. It almost certainly meant that their beloved Virginie would soon be settled close to them in charming salubrious Chantilly....
Dampier's story, and you only believe a part. If I shared your view I should think very ill of her indeed. "Yes," said the Senator slowly, "that is so, Gerald. I believe that the Poulains are telling the truth, and that this poor young woman thinks she is telling the truth two very different things, my boy, as you will find out by the time you know as much of human nature as I now do.
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