"You cannot think, Madame," went on La Vireville, the mischief gone out of his face, "how much that thought comforted me. It was difficult for me to connect the idea of you and . . . treachery. The knife—well and good, I could understand that, but not the other."
Mme. de Guéfontaine lifted her head and met his eyes.
"The difficulty is," she said quietly, "to be sure that I have convinced you that I did not betray you even in intention; that when they rushed in, my idea of vengeance was already dead."
"I am content to take your word for that, Madame," said La Vireville, and, bending forward, he lightly took one of her hands and lifted it to his lips.
She flushed and sighed. "It is no use for you to deny it, M. le Chevalier. You are what you refuse to be called."
At that moment Grain d'Orge stumbled past, bearing an armful of herbage for the horse, and casting at the pair as he went, out of his quick little eyes, a glance at once solicitous and discontented. Mme. de Guéfontaine seemed fully conscious of it.
"Poor Grain d'Orge," she said musingly, as soon as he was out of hearing. "He was half beside himself with anxiety about you. I do not know to what saints he did not pray. I am sure he will never be able to pay for all the candles he has promised to St. Yves alone. How was it, Monsieur Augustin, you who repudiate . . . that word . . . that you had never given him even an inkling that I was responsible (as you had every reason to think) for the appearance of the National Guard?"
"Because in that case, Madame," responded La Vireville promptly, "I should never have got him to help me in my little plan. He would never have gone near the lock-up. He was sufficiently insubordinate as it was. And, as events turned out," he added gravely, "it was a good thing that I never even hinted at it. He would have been quite capable of cutting your throat when he got you alone."
"He did not seem very much pleased with me as it was," remarked Mme. de Guéfontaine pensively. "He accused me of having——" She stopped abruptly.
"He made the same remark to me in the cottage," observed La Vireville gravely, but with laughter in his eyes. "I trust that, like me, you were quick to acknowledge its justice. I told him that you had done it with a—knife."