was reviving. She replied to his letters. This correspondence, as the reader has been informed, came to the knowledge of Wilford Hadfield, and led to his separation from his wife, for such he believed Regine to be. When Lenoir next encountered the Pichots in Paris, they were living in apparent affluence, probably upon the money they had obtained under the will of Colonel Hadfield. But M. Pichot gambled very much. By-and-by, he was keeping a boarding house, in other words, a gaming-table. The police interfered; there was said to be a distinct conspiracy to defraud, in which the Pichot family were all implicated. Upon a charge arising out of this, true or false, it was hard to say, Regine was found guilty, and imprisoned in St. Lazare. She escaped, to quit France, return to the profession she had adopted at Brussels, to work hard, to appear at various continental theatres, with a rising fame as Mademoiselle Boisfleury, and ultimately to delight London at Mr. Grimshaw’s establishment, with the result we have seen. Monsieur Dominique Pichot was less prosperous. He was not morally benefited by his incarceration. He formed imprudent acquaintances. From cheating at cards and conspiring to defraud, he advanced to forgery, robbery with violence, &c. He obtained at last a sentence of hard labour at the galleys for twenty years, upon a conviction for burglary and attempt to murder. It was not found possible at that time, to the regret of very many, to prove any complicity in the crime on the part of Madame Pichot. She was permitted to quit France, and in the character of Madame Boisfleury to chaperone her daughter, the danseuse, about the continent.
For Regine’s share in the nefarious transactions we have narrated, it is only to be said, that she was completely an instrument in the evil-working hands of the Pichots. Born in India, luxurious by nature and habit, indolent, vain, pleasure-loving, it was not surprising that she should find the restrictions of the Belgian pension singularly irksome—it was not wonderful that she should turn a willing ear to the ardent petitions and promises of René Lenoir—since in these she found a certain escape from conditions that constrained and vexed her. It is even likely enough that, at the outset, she had believed in the devotedness of her admirer, as she had fancied that she reciprocated his devotion. Brought to England, she had attached herself greatly to Colonel Hugh; it is possible that this state of feeling was generated by certain hints let fall from time to time by Madame Pichot, to the effect that in the Colonel, Regine beheld her real father. In this affection, and in the threat to reveal to the Colonel the secret of her marriage with Lenoir, the Pichots found that they possessed extraordinary power over Regine, a leverage by means of which they could move her in whichever direction they might will. Regine—not naturally cruel—and shrinking from the villainy she saw impending, did all that was possible to avert from herself the affection of Wilford Hadfield. She was compelled to listen to him; as in time by means of threats, and cajoleries, and assurances that her first marriage was void, she was induced to become his wife. The marriage accomplished, Regine found herself more than ever in the power of her putative parents. They informed her that she had been deliberately guilty of a felony, and that they had but to lay the facts of the case before the police to bring down upon her condign punishment. She, however, availed herself of the first opportunity to obtain a separation from Wilford, though she could not prevent this separation being made the means of extortion to an extraordinary amount. In truth, she had not been greatly moved by his love, occupied as she had been by the difficulties of her own position, and possibly by the remains of such affection as she had ever entertained for René Lenoir. The feeling she had permitted herself to manifest in her interview with Wilford, a short time before the accident, at the T. R. Long Acre, and the outburst of jealous rage with which she had dared to insult Violet and her child, can only be attributed to those uncontrollable impulses and violent changes of emotion to which a woman of Regine’s nature and habits of life will always be subject. It is possible, however, that such love as she was capable of, might be aroused in Wilford’s favour, by a recollection of his former devotion to her—a striking contrast, it might be, to such forms of passion as she had since had experience of—and the shameful injuries that devotion had entailed upon him, while the thought that this was now hopelessly gone from her, would be sufficient to prompt her to almost any excess of violence and anger.
Thus far we have drawn from the confessions of Lenoir and Regine such explanations as appear to be necessary for the proper understanding of our history. There is but little to add to the information thus obtained.
In a letter received from Lenoir at a date shortly subsequent to his statement Martin read:
“Be consoled, my dear friend; a dangerous person will be removed from your country—free, happy, and noble. There will be no esclandre. It will be done without the assistance of your minister of the interior: yet the hospitality superb of England will not be insulted. You will sleep, while we shall act: as under the influence of chloroform there will be removed from your bosom a cancer dangerous and painful; the operation will be performed adroitly by the government of which I have the honour to be an executive.
I am instructed to arrest Madame Pichot. She is hiding; but I owe it to her child—Monsieur Alexis—that I know where to find her. Monsieur Pichot, in the hope of ameliorating his condition, has made confessions implicating his wife. It is not generous; it is in effect cruel to the wife who loves her husband. But what do you wish? It is good for France, for justice, for the police. She will be apprehended to-night; to-morrow she will sleep in Paris—in prison. Ah! has she not cause to love her husband? But the wife has always cause.
“‘And Monsieur Alexis escapes, then?’ you ask me. I hear your voice, I see your looks. Ah, my friend! calm yourself, have patience. It is true: and you will believe no more in the justice poetic! But believe, then, in the poetry of
