“Dreaming!” said the girl softly; “of what am I always dreaming, Théroigne?”
“Of what, indeed! Of things lost and longed for? Perhaps, sometimes of the little poor brother that was murdered and hidden in a tree?”
A voice shrieked at her back.
“Damnation seize thee!”
She let fall her burden and, scrambling to her feet, turned upon the voice.
“What, then!”
“So wanton!” cried Ned—“so wanton and so cruel!”
His fury leapt in a moment, like a boiling spring. He could not have explained or controlled it—could not even have traced its source to a deep incorruptible chivalry that was instinctive to his sex and beyond the understanding of the other.
“Cruel?” she exclaimed madly. “And am I not thy delegate—thy informer?”
“Not, so to take advantage, like a cursed mouchard, of this poor drugged wretch!” he cried. “Why, God in heaven! are you so much less foul——?”