At this question Prosper turned crimson. But he knew that it would never do to keep silent about his imprudent step.
“Alas!” he stammered, “I read in a newspaper that Clameran was about to marry Madeleine; and I acted like a fool.”
“What did you do?” inquired Verduret anxiously.
“I wrote an anonymous letter to M. Fauvel, informing him that his wife was in love with Raoul—”
M. Verduret here brought his clinched fist down upon the little table near by, with such violence that the thin plank was shivered. His cheerful face in an instant clouded over.
“What folly!” he exclaimed, “how could you go and ruin everything?”
He arose from his seat, and strode up and down the room, oblivious of the lodgers below, whose windows shook with every angry stamp of his foot.
“What made you act so like a child, an idiot, a fool?” he said indignantly to Prosper.
“Monsieur!”
“Here you are, drowning; an honest man springs into the water to save you, and just as he approaches the shore you entangle his feet to prevent him from swimming! What was my last order to you when I left here?”