"Your treachery," retorted Madame quietly, "has already wrought all the evil and brought untold danger to all our friends and death to a great many—to your father, perhaps, to Laurent, certainly. There is nothing that you can say to me now which can avert the awful catastrophe for which you and you alone are responsible."
"Treachery!" exclaimed Fernande. "I?"
"Yes, you! The surprise coup planned by de Puisaye has failed. The alarm was given at the armament works an hour and a half ago; since then there has been continuous firing in the direction of Mortain. The garrison there has been aroused, that of Domfront, too, no doubt. Some of our contingents have been surprised. They are selling their lives dearly at this hour. Your father is probably fighting over there. Who is it, then, who has betrayed us to Ronnay de Maurel and delivered our brave little army into the hands of our enemies?"
"Not I!" protested Fernande loudly.
Light had suddenly broken on the hideous mystery which had confronted her when she first entered this room. She understood everything now—her aunt's prostration, her despair, the semi-insanity which was overclouding her brain, making her see lurid phantoms of treachery. She—Fernande—was suspected of having betrayed her father, her lover, her friends; and Madame la Marquise, clinging to that abominable thought, was rapidly losing all sense of justice, of reasoning and of right. The girl's very soul was outraged at the monstrous accusation.
"How dared you harbour such abominable thoughts of me?" she cried indignantly.
A strident laugh broke from Denise de Mortain's throat.
"Would you prefer it if I thought that you had stolen out of the château to-night—and alone—in order to meet a swain behind the nearest hedge?"
"Oh!"