Forget-me-not by Marjorie Bowen — Read

While the angry crowd clustered round the Hotel du Boccage openly demanding the punishment of the murderer, who, they feared, owing to his rank, his friendship with the Royal Family, would escape retribution (there was already talk that the King had smuggled him to England), while the whole peerage was aghast, shaken by this frightful disaster, while the civil authorities were faced by the problem of what to do with a criminal who was also a peer of France, a member of one of the noblest, most powerful families of the realm, Lucille Debelleyme, suddenly the most notorious, most hated woman in France, appeared before M. Mauzisse the _procureur géneral_, and M. Hamelin _juge d'instruction_. These men and their clerks could not help looking with avid curiosity at this woman whom all the world accused of long, shameless and secret adultery, of murder plotted in the shadow of a nursery, between the kisses and caresses of the children of the victim--this nobody who had brought to ruin a famous House.

She was calm and had dressed herself carefully, her gown of pale nankeen was adorned with white braid _en soutache_, she wore a little jacket of black moire. She carried her frilled straw bonnet with the lilac ribbon, as if she expected, after her examination, to be permitted to leave the Conciergerie.