"Oh, my poor, poor friend!" exclaimed Vaughan as he bent over her. "I who thought your sufferings were at an end, and in my ignorance added to them by telling you so brutally what I thought of that man!"
"You did not tell me more than I have thought myself," she said. "For a long time, to my contempt for him has been added an absolute abhorrence."
Vaughan here interrupted her with a gesture, intimating silence, his eyes fixed on the distance.
"Is it he?" she said in a trembling whisper.
Vaughan continued to look. He could make out the dim outline of a man's form advancing through the trees.
Clarisse turned to escape, whispering as she went: "Will you come on afterwards to the house?"
"No; to-morrow I will, not to-day. He is sure to have me followed," replied Vaughan, his eyes still fixed on the advancing figure.
Clarisse was about to reply, but Vaughan had recognised Robespierre.
"It is he!" he exclaimed. "Go quickly, he is coming this way," pointing to the path by which Olivier had come.
Clarisse had already crossed the stream and was standing behind a curtain of reeds. She parted them gently and asked, with shaking voice—