“The streets are so full,” replied Sebastian, glancing out of the window, “that you will pass through them unnoticed. I see beneath the trees, a neighbour, Koch the locksmith, who is perhaps waiting to give me news. While you are saying farewell, I will go out and speak to him. What he has to tell may interest you and your comrades at sea—may help your escape from the city this morning.”
He took his hat as he spoke and went to the door. Mathilde, thirsting for the news that seemed to hum in the streets like the sound of bees, rose and followed him. Desiree and D'Arragon were left alone. She had gone to the window, and, turning there, she looked back at him over her shoulder, where he stood by the door watching her.
“So, you see,” she said, “there is no other Sebastian.”
D'Arragon made no reply. She came nearer to him, her blue eyes sombre with contempt for the man she had married. Suddenly she pointed to the chair which D'Arragon had just vacated.
“That is where he sat. He has eaten my father's salt a hundred times,” she said, with a short laugh. For whithersoever civilization may take us, we must still go back to certain primaeval laws of justice between man and man.
“You judge too hastily,” said D'Arragon; but she interrupted him with a gesture of warning.
“I have not judged hastily,” she said. “You do not understand. You think I judge from that letter. That is only a confirmation of something that has been in my mind for a long time—ever since my wedding-day. I knew when you came into the room upstairs on that day that you did not trust Charles.”
“I—?” he asked.
“Yes,” she answered, standing squarely in front of him and looking him in the eyes. “You did not trust him. You were not glad that I had married him. I could see it in your face. I have never forgotten.”
D'Arragon turned away towards the window. Sebastian and Mathilde were in the street below, in the shade of the trees, talking with the eager neighbours.