“Impossible.”
“If not for M. Ferailleur’s sake, for the sake of his poor widowed mother.”
“Pascal must be put out of the way!”
“Why do you say that? Do you hate him so much then? What has he done to you?”
“To me, personally? Nothing—I even feel actual sympathy for him.”
Madame d’Argeles was confounded. “What!” she stammered; “it wasn’t on your own account that you did this?”
“Why, no.”
She sprang to her feet, and quivering with scorn and indignation, cried: “Ah! then the deed is even more infamous—even more cowardly!” But alarmed by the threatening gleam in M. de Coralth’s eyes, she went no further.
“A truce to these disagreeable truths,” said he, coldly. “If we expressed our opinions of each other without reserve, in this world, we should soon come to hard words. Do you think I acted for my own pleasure? Suppose some one had seen me when I slipped the cards into the pack. If that had happened, I should have been ruined.”
“And you think that no one suspects you?”