“I think he is either a dull provincial person or a spy in search of information.”
“And you replied to him with that notion?”
“Nothing warranted me to answer him otherwise; he was polite to me and I was so to him.”
“But if he be a spy——”
“What do you think a spy would be about here? We are not living in the time of Cardinal Richelieu, who would have closed the ports on bare suspicion.”
“It matters not; you were wrong to reply to him as you did,” continued Aramis, following with his eyes the young man, now vanishing behind the cliffs.
“And you,” said Athos, “you forget that you committed a very different kind of imprudence in pronouncing Lord de Winter’s name. Did you not see that at that name the young man stopped?”
“More reason, then, when he spoke to you, for sending him about his business.”
“A quarrel?” asked Athos.
“And since when have you become afraid of a quarrel?”