“Let me alone,” he said, roughly, disengaging himself.
A horrible presentiment crossed Marie-Anne’s mind.
She stepped back, and solemnly, entreatingly, she said:
“Take care, take care, my brother. It is not well to tamper with these matters. Leave to God’s justice the task of punishing those who have wronged us.”
But nothing could move Jean Lacheneur, or divert him from his purpose. He uttered a hoarse, discordant laugh, then striking his gun heavily with his hand, he exclaimed:
“Here is justice!”
Appalled and distressed beyond measure, Marie-Anne sank into a chair. She discerned in her brother’s mind the same fixed, fatal idea which had lured her father on to destruction—the idea for which he had sacrificed all—family, friends, fortune, the present and the future—even his daughter’s honor—the idea which had caused so much blood to flow, which had cost the life of so many innocent men, and which had finally conducted him to the scaffold.
“Jean,” she murmured, “remember our father.”
The young man’s face became livid; his hands clinched involuntarily, but he controlled his anger.
Advancing toward his sister, in a cold, quiet tone that added a frightful violence to his threats, he said: