This last argument had its effect on
Miss Welwyn. The baseless, helpless hope that the French
authorities might yet be proved to be in error, which she had
already felt in her own room, returned to her now. She suffered
the agent to lead her upstairs.
He took the candle from her hand when she pointed to the door;
opened it softly; and, leaving it ajar, went into the room.
She looked through the gap with a feverish, horror-struck
curiosity. Franval was lying on his side in a profound sleep,
with his back turned toward the door. The agent softly placed the
candle upon a small reading-table between the door and the
bedside, softly drew down the bed-clothes a little away from the
sleeper's back, then took a pair of scissors from the
toilet-table, and very gently and slowly began to cut away, first
the loose folds, then the intervening strips of linen, from the
part of Franval's night-gown that was over his shoulders. When
the upper part of his back had been bared in this way, the agent
took the candle and held it near the flesh. Miss Welwyn heard him
ejaculate some word under his breath, then saw him looking round
to where she was standing, and beckoning to her to come in.
Mechanically she obeyed; mechanically she looked down where his
finger was pointing. It was the convict Monbrun--there, just
visible under the bright light of the candle, were the fatal
letters "T.
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