“What!” he said. “Maxime”—
“Was arrested last night, and is kept in close confinement.”
However well prepared Daniel was by Papa Ravinet’s account, he could never have hoped to manage the conversation as well as chance did. He replied,—
“It cannot be for having robbed me. M. de Brevan must have been arrested for having attempted to murder me.”
The lioness who has just been robbed of her whelps does not rise with greater fury in her eyes than Sarah did when she heard these words.
“What!” she cried aloud. “He has dared touch you!”
“Not personally; oh, no! But he hired for the base purpose a wretched felon, who was caught, and has confessed everything. I see that the order to apprehend my friend Maxime must have reached here before me, although it left Saigon some time later than I did.”
Might not M. de Brevan be as cowardly as Crochard when he saw that all was lost? This idea, one would think, would have made Sarah tremble. But it never occurred to her.
“Ah, the wretch!” she repeated. “The scoundrel, the rascal!”
And, sitting down by Daniel, she asked him to tell her all the details of these attempted assassinations, from which he had escaped only by a miracle.