"I know that," he said, "or I would not be here."
"Then your intrusion is that of a coward, if you knew that I was unprotected."
"Are you afraid of me, Crystal?" he asked with a sneer.
"I am afraid of no one," she replied. "But since you and I have nothing to say to one another, I beg that you will no longer force your company upon me."
"Your pardon, but there is something very important which I must say to you. I have news of to-day's doings out there at Waterloo, which bear upon the whole of your future and upon your happiness. I myself leave for England in less than half an hour. I was taking my place in the diligence outside the Trois Rois when I saw you coming down the cathedral steps. Fate has given me an opportunity for which I sought vainly all day. You will never regret it, Crystal, if you listen to me now."
"I listen," she broke in coolly. "I pray you be as brief as you can."
"Will you order the servant to go?"
For a moment longer she hesitated. Commonsense told her that it was neither prudent nor expedient to hold converse with this man, who was an avowed and bitter enemy of her cause. But he had spoken of the doings at Waterloo and spoken of them in connection with her own future and her happiness, and—prudent or not—she wanted to hear what he had to say, in the vague hope that from a chance word carelessly dropped by Victor de Marmont she would glean, if only a scrap, some news of that on which St. Genis would not dwell but on which hung her heart and her very life—the fate of the British troops.
After all he might know something, he might say something which would help her to bear this intolerable misery of uncertainty: and on the merest chance of that she threw prudence to the winds.
"You may go, Jeanne," she said. "But remain within call. Leave the front door open," she added. "M. le Comte and M. le Marquis will be here directly."