"When? where?"
"To-night; at the ford of Pont-Farcy."
"Good God! It was from there the shots came!" cried Marianne.
Suddenly the eyes of the poor woman became fixed and haggard. They lighted on Joseph's hands.
"You have blood on your hands!" she cried. "Whose blood is it? Joseph, tell me that! Whose blood is it?"
The Chouan's first movement was to hide his hands, but he thought better of it, and brazened the matter out.
"That blood," he answered, his face, which had been pale, becoming purple, "is the blood of a traitor to his God, his country, and his king. It is the blood of a man who forgot that the Blues had sent his father to the scaffold and his brother to the galleys,--a man who did not shrink from taking service with the Blues."
"You have killed my husband! you have murdered your brother!" cried Marianne, facing Joseph with savage violence.
"No, I did not."
"You lie."