Mlle. Lucienne shook her head.
“And yet,” she said, “even after your explanation, it is in vain that I seek why and how I can so far disturb M. de Thaller’s security that he wishes to do away with me.”
Maxence made a gesture of superb indifference. “I confess,” he said, “that I don’t see it either. But what matters it? Without being able to explain why, I feel that the Baron de Thaller is the common enemy, yours, mine, my father’s, and M. de Tregars’. And something tells me, that, with M. de Tregars’ help, we shall triumph. You would share my confidence, Lucienne, if you knew him. There is a man! and my sister has made no vulgar choice. If he has told my mother that he has the means of serving her, it is because he certainly has.”
He stopped, and, after a moment of silence, “Perhaps,” he went on, “the commissary of police might readily understand what I only dimly suspect; but, until further orders, we are forbidden to have recourse to him. It is not my own secret that I have just told you; and, if I have confided it to you, it is because I feel that it is a great piece of good fortune for us; and there is no joy for me, that you do not share.”
Mlle. Lucienne wanted to ask many more particulars. But, looking at his watch,
“Half-past ten!” he exclaimed, “and M. de Tregars waiting for me.”
And he started off, repeating once more to the young girl,
“I will see you to-night: until then, good hope and good courage.”
In the court, two ill-looking men were talking with the Fortins. But it happened often to the Fortins to talk with ill-looking men: so he took no notice of them, ran out to the Boulevard, and jumping into a cab,
“Rue Lafitte 70,” he cried to the driver, “I pay the trip,—three francs.”