Again she looked at him long and searchingly until the lustre of her eyes seemed to daze him.
“And condemned me without a word,” she said, with a sigh of exquisitely tender reproach. “Is that how a man trusts the girl he loves? Nay, Jacques, you may think you love me, but you would have come to me in candour and trust, not have flung an angry taunt at me.”
“Did I not trust you? Did I not warn you against this Gerard de Cobalt? Was I not ready to betray even my master for your sake? Was I not telling you everything that evening?”
She continued to hold him with the magnetism of her look, and when he stopped she answered slowly and deliberately—
“I shall marry Antoine de Cavannes. He loves me, I know, and is as true as steel in his love. He guards me here and will see I come to no harm.”
He moved uneasily under her glance, and then looking about him lowered his voice.
“He is not true to you, Lucette. He is going to betray you.”
“Jacques, Jacques, how dare you! Would you slander him, too? Have a care lest I tell him.”
“Listen to me; what I say is the truth. He thinks you know where Mademoiselle de Malincourt can be found and the prisoners; there is a price of a thousand crowns on their heads, and he means to use you to find them and win the money.”
“Holy Virgin! now am I a miserable and desolate girl,” cried Lucette in a fresh paroxysm of distress. “Oh, it cannot be true, it cannot!”