"You fool!" she broke in, an undercurrent of fierce indignation vibrating through her scorn. "What are you saying? He would betray you? He?" She tossed her arms to Heaven, and burst into a laugh of infinite derision. "Have no fear of that, M. le Vicomte, for you are dealing with a nature of a nobility that you cannot so much as surmise. If he were minded to betray you, why did he not do so to-day, when they offered him his liberty in exchange for information that would lead to your recapture?"
"But although he may have refused to-day," returned the Vicomte frenziedly, "he may think better of it to-morrow-perhaps even tonight.
Ciel! Think of the risk we run; already it may be too late. Oh, why," he demanded reproachfully, "why didn't you listen to me when, days ago, I counselled flight?"
"Because it neither was, nor is, my intention to fly."
" What?" he cried, and, his jaw fallen and his eyes wide, he regarded her. Then suddenly he caught her by the arm and shook her roughly.
"Are you mad?" he cried, in a frenzy of anger and fear. "Am I to die like a dog that a scum of a Republican may save his miserable neck? Is this canaille of a revolutionist to betray me to his rabble Tribunal?"
"Already have I told you that you need fear no betrayal."
"Need I not?" he sneered. "Ma foi! but I know these ruffians. There is not an ounce of honour in the whole National Convention."
"Fool!" she blazed, rising and confronting him with an anger before which he recoiled, appalled. "Do you dare to stand there and prate of honour - you? Do you forget why he stood his trial? Do you forget why he is dying, and can you not see the vile thing that you are doing in arguing flight, that you talk of honour thus, and deny his claim to it? Mon Dieu! Your effrontery stifles me! La Boulaye was right when he said that with us honour is but a word - just so much wind, and nothing more."
He stared at her in uncomprehending wonder. He drew away another step. He accounted her mad, and, that he might humour her, he put by his own fears for the moment - a wonderful unselfishness this in the most nobly-born Vicomte d'Ombreval.
"My poor Suzanne," he murmured. "Our trouble has demoralised your understanding. You take a false view of things. You do not apprehend the situation."
"In God's name, be silent!" she gasped.
"But the time is not one for silence," he returned.
"So I had thought," quoth she. "Yet since you can be silent and furtive in other matters, I beg that you will be silent in this also. You talk in vain, Monsieur, in any case. For I am not minded to leave Choisy. If you urge me further I shall burn our passport."
And with that she left him, to seek the solitude of her own room.
In a passion of tears she flung herself upon the little bed, and there she lay, a prey to such an anguish as had never touched her life before.
And now, in that hour of her grief, it came to her - as the sun pierces the mist - that she loved La Boulaye; that she had loved him, indeed, since that night at Boisvert, although she had stifled the very thought, and hidden it even from herself, as being unworthy in one of her station to love a man so lowly-born as Caron. But now, on the eve of his death, the truth would no longer be denied.
It cried, perchance, the louder by virtue of the pusillanimity of the craven below stairs in whose place Caron was to die; but anyhow, it cried so loudly that it overbore the stern voice of the blood that had hitherto urged her to exclude the sentiment from her heart.
No account now did she take of any difference in station. Be she nobler a thousand times, be he ******r a thousand times, the fact remained that she was a woman, he a man, and beyond that she did not seek to go.
Low indeed were the Lilies of France when a daughter of the race of their upholders heeded them so little and the caste they symbolised.
Henriette came to her that afternoon, and, all ignorant of the sources of her grief, she essayed to soothe and comfort her, in which, at last, she succeeded.
In the evening Ombreval sent word that he wished to speak to her - and that his need was urgent. But she returned him the answer that she would see him in the morning. She was indisposed that evening, she added, in apology.