“Indeed? And do you know why he left?”
“A messenger came to say that his mother in Paris was dying.”
“Mother!” said Camain, exploding. “Mother dying! You have the impudence . . . Shall I tell you, since you are so persistently innocent, why he left? His plans in Paris were threatened, and you know what those plans were, and his work here, too, as well as I—no, by God, better, since I have not yet had time to investigate his operations at Mirabel.”
“Plans? Work?” repeated Valentine. “Do you refer to the Italian——”
“Pshaw!” broke in the ex-Jacobin savagely, “don’t trifle with me like that, woman! I say you know what he came to do, and you helped him to do it, and to get away with his booty.”
Then he had got away . . . or did Camain only mean from Mirabel? Valentine made no reply.
“Why don’t you answer me?” barked her late admirer.
“You are so positive, Citizen Deputy, what is the use? It is of little avail for me to protest—though you must know it quite well—that I had no hand in the appointment of this gardener who seems to have displeased you, nor in the carrying out of his ‘work,’ whatever it may have been, except that I used to give him a cup of coffee with his meal at mid-day.”
“Yes, just as out of the same pure kindness you opened the door in the park wall to let one or the other of the rest out or in—just as you fooled me into saving you from being confronted with the man who broke into the sallette, your accomplice, whom you invited here, I expect——”
“Never!” interrupted Valentine firmly. “I had nothing to do with his coming, any more than with that of the gardener.”