"An you will jeer, ma tante," said Fernande quietly; "'twere better I said no more."
"It is your duty to say more, child, now you have said so much," said Madame gravely. "What is it that in our council of war has struck you as rash or ill-advised? I will confess that you do know my son Ronnay better than any of us; you have seen him more often. He has made love to you, and, in so doing, he may have revealed some traits in his character which have remained hidden from us. Speak, therefore, child, openly and frankly. You wish to warn us all. Against what?"
"Against bribing a criminal—a jail-bird like Leroux, to betray his master," replied Fernande calmly.
Madame laughed and shrugged her shoulders.
"That," she said, "my dear, is childish. On Leroux' help rests the whole edifice of our plans and our entire hope of success."
"I know that well enough," rejoined Fernande. "I know that you are not like to heed anything I say. I only spoke because you forced me. Think you," she added more vehemently, "that if I had thought for a moment that you, or father, or M. de Puisaye, would have listened to me, I would not have dragged myself at your feet and kissed the ground and licked the dust and never risen until you heard, until you gave up all thought of joining issue with a miserable traitor, a criminal like Leroux. It is because I knew that my voice would count as less than nothing with you all that I remained silent."
"You speak with strange excitement, child...."
"I speak as I feel," she retorted hotly. "I speak because something in me tells me that some awful disaster will come to us and to our cause through trafficking with Leroux and his kind. Of this I am as convinced, ma tante, as I am of the fact that M. de Maurel already suspects our machinations, and on this," she concluded with marvellous forcefulness, "I would stake my life."
"You are mad, Fernande!"