woman. I saw him.”
“He has done more than that,” said one of the officers, grimly, as if, after all, the striking of a woman was but a trivial affair.
They secured the young man, and dragged him with them. The girl came up to them and said, falteringly—
“It is all a mistake, it was an accident. He didn’t mean to do it.”
“Oh, he didn’t, and pray how do you know?” asked one of the officers.
“You little devil,” said Jean to the girl, through his clinched teeth, “it’s all your fault.”
The officers hurried him off.
“I think,” said one, “that we should have arrested the girl; you heard what she said.”
“Yes,” said the other, “but we have enough on our hands now, if the crowd find out who he is.”
Lurine thought of following them, but she was so stunned by the words that her lover had said to her, rather than by the blow he had given her that she turned her steps sadly towards the Pont Royal and went to her room.
The next morning she did not go through the gardens, as usual, to her work, and when she entered the Pharmacie de Siam, the proprietor cried out, “Here she is, the vixen! Who would have thought it of her? You wretch, you stole my drugs to give to that villain!”
“I did not,” said Lurine, stoutly. “I put the money in the till for them.”
“Hear her! She confesses!” said the proprietor.
The two concealed officers stepped forward and arrested her where she stood as the accomplice of Jean Duret, who, the night before, had flung a bomb in the crowded Avenue de l’Opéra.
Even the prejudiced French judges soon saw that the girl was innocent of all evil intent, and was but the victim of the scoundrel who passed by the name of Jean Duret. He was sentenced for life; she was set free. He had tried to place the blame on her, like the craven he was, to shield another woman. This was what cut Lurine to the heart. She might have tried to find an excuse for his crime, but she
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