"
"I am not talking about the sort of female you refer to, monsieur, but
about a child--a girl of perhaps twelve years."
"How, pray, can one determine the age of a lady whom no one has seen?"
"Certain telltale circumstances give one a clue," retorted De Fervlans.
"Why, for instance, do you keep a doll in your rooms?"
"A doll? I play with it myself sometimes! I am a queer old fellow with
peculiar tastes."
"Very good; we will allow that you are telling the truth. What have you
to say to the fact that you took to your apartment yesterday evening a
stray child, and an hour later your friend came out of the house with
another child, wrapped in the shawl which had enveloped the lost child
when you found her--"
"Have they been overtaken?" hastily interrupted Cambray, forgetting
himself.
"No, they have not--more 's the pity!" returned the marquis. "My
detective was not clever enough to perceive the difference between the
eight-year-old girl who was carried to your apartments at ten o'clock,
and the twelve-year-old little maid whom your friend brought downstairs
at eleven, pretending that he was going in search of the lost child's
mother.
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