“Do you mean you would kill him out of consideration for me?” she asked, as if incredulous.
“I would do anything for you—either kill or pardon, but you will not let me,” he answered, with the first touch of passion.
He had led round to his object cunningly; but not so cunningly that she did not understand him.
“Yet I may ask you,” she replied. “Prove to me his unworthiness first; and then——” she stopped.
“What then?”
“You cannot prove it, monsieur,” she cried, as though she had first wavered in her faith and then rallied it. And so he read her words. “He is what I have said, an innocent and gallant gentleman.”
“If he be Gerard de Cobalt he is a murderer of the vilest and most treacherous type. I have the fullest proofs.”
“But if he be not M. de Cobalt?”
“Then he has shown himself a spy; and spies when they are caught must take their chances. But he is more than a spy.”
“How?”