“‘Ah, ça! He must catch me first. Have I earned the money?’
“‘Yes,’ said I; ‘whether it will do you good or not I cannot say. There it is,’ and I gave it him. ‘Now, where are you going?’
“‘If you intend stating what I have told you to Monsieur Gramont,’ said Dubois, ‘you may say I am gone to Havre. I only require an hour’s start. You will let the girl Dedan go?’
“‘Yes. She is a bad girl; but you made her so. She shall be dismissed.’
“‘Well,’ said the man, doggedly; ‘may be so; but we are not so bad as those who tempted us. I detested the wretch Vadier, and I hope he will die of his wound; I wanted to quit service and to marry Dedan, and the five hundred francs tempted me.’”
“Do you think, Monsieur Plessis,” asked Mabel, “that they will be caught by Monsieur Gramont?”
“I rather think,” said Jean Plessis, “that he would prefer their escaping. I do not imagine he will look for them. What surprises me is, that he ventured to drive out of his employ a man who knew so much.”
“I suspect,” observed Julia, “that he acquired his knowledge of what he told you, father, from practising the same espionage upon his employers that he was paid or promised to be paid for spying upon us.”
“Very likely,” returned the intendant; “however, his intelligence was of immense importance to me. It completely gave me the upper hand of Monsieur Gramont.”
“How do you intend to proceed?” said Madame Coulancourt. “I feel so very anxious about Julian.”